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Working from Home with Kids

The COVID-19 pandemic surprised us and changed our lives fundamentally. As a result, we had to switch to remote working, and all schools decided to close up. Many parents found themselves in a very challenging situation: working from home with kids.

Although focusing on work and sitting on Zoom meetings with children that need constant attention is really hard, it is not impossible. Here, you can find five non-virtual ways you can engage your children to do alone, which will help them develop their skills simultaneously. 

Working from home with kids is so dang stressful but these tips saved  my sanity! Especially #6!

5 Tips to Survive Working from Home with Kids

Puzzles and Board Games

Many classic board games you have played in your childhood, like memory and puzzles, are still fun to younger generations. They help lay out the foundations for skills like math, reading, writing, and much more. They can be a great substitute for boring practice books, and unlike them, puzzles and games can be played alone. 

You can use store-bought puzzles like those from One Hundred Toys, or make them together. You can encourage your children to draw pictures on sturdy paper or cardboard, and use a pencil to outline pieces directly on their drawing. Then you just have to cut it with a good pair of sharp scissors, mix them all up, and start solving. If all goes well, it will engage your children for a long time. 

Arts and Crafts

Activities like crafting and painting encourage motor skills and allow children to develop their creativity, which helps them mentally, socially, and emotionally. It can boost their ability to analyze and solve problems. An essential thing about creating art without any boundaries is that it can give children more self-confidence, so they can learn that they are valuable and they can do anything they want.

If you want to focus your child’s attention on art for hours, you can give them various materials and ideas. For instance, you can set up a jewelry-making station with strings, beads, colorful cereals, feathers, ribbons, etc. It may also be a good idea to go bigger in size. You can prepare a workstation with large pieces of cardboard and paint, and ask your child to paint themselves, the whole house, village, motorway, or anything they are interested in. 

If you have more than one child, you can organize a friendly competition, like who will build the highest tower out of paper. Meanwhile, you can work peacefully with the knowledge that your children are spending quality time instead of watching TV. 

Indoor Bowling

Allow your children to create their own indoor bowling alleys at home. If you don’t have skittles, you can use other objects such as plastic bottles, Tupperwares, colorful blocks, or basically anything that’s not too heavy and won’t break after hitting it with a bowl. Your child can create the track however they like. It can be straight like in a real alley, or it can have few different parts, or turns. Skittles don’t have to be lined up like real bowling skittles. They can make it far more complex and set up some obstacles on every part of a track. 

It is an excellent activity for your child if you want them to practice visual sense and perception, as it involves stacking objects and knocking them down with a ball. 

Working from home with kids is so dang stressful but these tips saved my sanity! Especially #6!

Decorating Your Office

Just because you are working, it doesn’t mean that you have to be in separate rooms. Give your children the feeling that they can help you during work. Let them decorate your house or office with paintings and garlands. You can prepare a separate space for their art and tell them that your work will be much more pleasant with beautiful things they will make. It will make your children feel important and needed. 

Treasure Hunt

Who didn’t love treasure hunts? Especially if there is a prize at the end! You can prepare a map or write clues on pieces of paper and hide them all-around your house. The first piece has to be in a place your child sees every day, like a cereal box, inside a snack bowl, on the couch, or taped to the TV. You can leave the main prize at the end, or put small things like coins with every clue. This way, your child can put them later in the piggy bank. 

If you live in a house with a garden, you can also prepare various challenges – for example, the next clue will unlock if they can jump rope ten times. This way, your child will practice both mental and physical skills

The Bottom Line

We all know that putting your child in front of the TV or giving them a smartphone to play on is much easier than entertaining them in a non-virtual way. However, working from home with kids requires some planning. It can be overwhelming to deal with kids and even more if you lose your phone amid all the chaos. On the one hand, you need to manage your children, and on the other hand, you need to call your spouse to get something urgent, and that’s when you find out your phone is missing. However, with callmyphone.org, you will be able to find it instantly. It’s a tool to dial your phone when you lose it. With games like these listed above, you will help them develop their skills which will benefit them later in life. 

Spending quality time and preparing games for your children to play will also strengthen your family bond. They will remember your effort, and once they grow up, they will be going back to these memories and think of their amazing parents!

Working from home with kids is so dang stressful but these tips saved my sanity! Especially #6!