It has been almost four months since we posted this blog and with Victoria now in stage 4 restrictions, we thought that it might be timely to re-post it.

If I am honest it has been a learning curve and things do not go to plan every day. We have learned to try and not put too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect & it is important to remind ourselves of this every day!

We have also learned that our kids have different needs and things can change multiple times per day. We feel that having structure is key to getting things done and keeping our sanity but we also need to understand that we have to be agile and try and roll with it.

Our children are now 5 and 3. We have a day plan to split up our time between working and looking after their children whilst in lockdown. We do not have all the answers and we are focusing on what works for us and our children.

If you are running out of ideas, here are a list of activities which have been recommended to us. Most of these require some screen time, however this can lead to other projects such as story writing, research projects and poems for older children, puppets and drawing for younger children and memory activities, for example recalling facts about animals they’ve watched, places they’ve seen.

Visit museums and Virtual Field Trips Google Arts and Culture partnered with over 2,500 museums and galleries around the world to offer virtual tours of their spaces. Some of the options include New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. The Louvre is also offering its own virtual tour online for free. The British Museum has virtual visitors to tour the Great Court and discover the ancient Rosetta Stone and Egyptian mummies.

Visit the zoo. Live video of the National Zoo and Smithsonian Learning Lab. The following zoos have webcams to view their animals.  San Diego Zoo, and Melbourne Zoo.

Geography and Space with National Geographic and this NASA initiative covers a wide range of topics including weather, climate, atmosphere, water, energy, plants, and animals. Explore the surface of Mars on the Curiosity Rover.

Cook and create: Crafts and activities, fun games, recipes, crafts, activities. Illustrated recipes designed to help kids age 2-12 cook. Recipes encourage culinary skills, literacy, maths and science. Kids Think Design explores careers in fashion design, graphic design, interior design, book design, product design, film and theatre, architecture, animation, and environmental design.

Learning by Traditional School Subjects: Online history classes for all ages preteen through adults. Online classes for kids. Maths as a fun part of your daily family routine, Maths games galore, kids numbers and Maths Frame. Science experiments that you can do at home, take a deep dive into ocean life and science podcasts to listen to with your kids. Boost writing confidence with Storybird.

Music: Music is for everyone. Lets kids play instruments online. Instruments include the guitar, piano, pan flute, drums, and bongos. A large selection of fun songs to help teach preschool students.

Coding: Scratch teaches students all about coding, see also coding for ages 4-10 and learn to code.

Educational games K-12. Short videos and texts that answer various burning questions for children, including vocabulary challenges and comprehension questions. Work on the 8 parts of speech. Children’s books read by famous people.

35,000 pages of online content on the cultures and countries of the world.

Movement: Lady Gaga’s former backup dancer, Mark Kanemura, is hosting virtual dance sessions on his Instagram page, Yoga and mindfulness for kids, movement and mindfulness videos created by child development experts, kid friendly workouts.

We hope that these ideas help.

Best of luck!