7 Ways to Entertain Your Children for Long Periods of Time
Without a doubt, on many occasions, you’ve felt overwhelmed because you didn’t know how to entertain your children for long periods of time. But you should know that there are many ways to keep your kids busy for hours.
Sometimes, due to various circumstances, such as an illness that keeps your child from going to school, bad weather, having to work from home (a very popular modality lately), you need your child to stay in their room playing.
It’s true that entertaining a child isn’t always an easy task, especially if they’re a lively child, they’re easily distracted, or they immediately leave their toys aside. Therefore, here are some ways to entertain your children for long periods of time.
What to keep in mind to entertain children for hours?
- Have an established schedule. In this schedule, we recommend including educational activities and games during established hours. Over the weekend, you can plan for the week to come.
- You can also include among the activities some physical tasks, so that your kids can exercise and release some of that energy they have.
- It’s important to have a routine. This provides both parents and children with organization. In addition, it’s very beneficial when to comes to reducing children’s bad moods, since they know what activity to do at any given time.
We have to get children to be independent enough to find their own ways to have fun. This skill will still be useful when they’re older and they can develop their creativity to invent any activity in order to have fun.
Ways to entertain children for hours on end
Make a small theater with puppets
You can do this as an educational activity. Together, you can make a puppet theater out of a cardboard box and decorate it according to your child’s taste. Afterward, you can use EVA rubber or felt to make different characters for your child to tell their stories. This way, they’ll spend a lot of time inventing thousands of stories with their puppets.
Playing with different textures: entertain your children for long periods of time
If you have an area that your child can get dirty and make a mess, you can put out different bowls with flour, pasta, cotton balls, sand, cloth, etc. Anything with which the child can experience different sensations.
Making a road
With masking tape or duct tape, you can make roads in their room or in the hallway. This will be a lot of fun and they’ll be entertained for a long time, driving their cars and trucks along this road. If you have figures of trees, animals, benches, etc., you can incorporate them into the layout to make it as real as possible.
Playing with homemade or store-bought play dough
Children love play dough, as they love to knead it and mold it into different shapes. So, you can prepare the play-dough yourself, in case the child is small and puts it in his mouth. To do this you need the following ingredients:
- Two cups of flour
- One cup of salt
- Another cup of water
- Food coloring
Once you’ve made the dough, you can separate it into separate portions and add different colors of food coloring.
Playing with bubble wrap
Although it may make a bit of noise, your little ones are sure to have hours of fun popping the bubbles. This way, they can explore it and pop the bubbles in whatever ways they can think of.
Entertain your children for long periods of time: make a cardboard car
You can take an old cardboard box and decorate it, between the two of you, as if it were a car or a train carriage. Then, put a string on it so that they can pull the car and carry their stuffed animals, dolls, or any toy they want around the house. Also, if the construction is sturdy enough, they can ride it and you can take them for a ride.
Paint
Children love to color, paint, draw, and make a mess… so, get a large piece of paper, place it on the floor, and let their imagination soar. Make sure they’re wearing clothes that can get dirty, because they’re sure to get covered in paint, but they’ll be happy to enjoy an activity that they’ll love.
Entertaining your children for long periods of time has never been easier
Here you have some ways to entertain your children for long periods of time. What you have to keep in mind is that, among all of these activities, you should choose the ones that are most appropriate depending on your child’s age and development.
If an activity isn’t suitable for your child, don’t attempt it. Here, we’ve simply provided you with some ideas to apply when you need them. So, let’s have fun!