How to Keep Your Child Busy

Its spring cleaning time and you have loads of work to do, the rooms have to be painted, or relatives are coming to stay over and you have a very active and curious little one running about the house making things difficult for you. Here are some tips to keep him safe and busy without ruining his creative development. Each of the activities given below would normally keep a child engaged for at least half an hour.

Care should be taken not to give him too many directions. These activities are not serious, so let him do them as he wants to. Do not worry about the wastage or the mess. The activities are not very messy and easy to clean up. Moreover they help to develop the child's motor skills, hand to eye co-ordination, space judgment, decision making skills and boost their self-esteem.

Precautions to take before starting these activities:

Take care that no breakable things are within the child's reach. Check that there are no plastic bags or long strings or wires around. Children love to wear plastic bags over their heads but can get suffocated. They may wrap the strings or wires around their necks. So keep such things away from them. Even though you can leave them alone in a room doing these activities, be within earshot. Take a peek at what he is doing every ten minutes at least.

Counting things:

You could give your child many boxes of different sizes and some items like potatoes, onions, balls, blocks such that he can count and place in the boxes. Mix up four to five kinds of objects and tell him to sort them out. Tell him that it is a very important job. He will enjoy doing it.

Shredding paper:

Children naturally enjoy tearing paper. Give your child many newspaper sheets and a basin of water. Tell him to shred the newspapers into thin shreds and soak them in the water. Allow him to play in the water, squeeze the wet shreds and sprinkle the water around him. When you feel he is getting bored with this activity, show him what can be done with the wet shreds. Squeeze the soaked shreds into lumps of different sizes.

Mould them into different but simple shapes like a ball, egg, cake or an ice cream cone. Two balls of different shapes can be placed one on the other to make it look like a bird. This pulp could be used later to make Paper Mache toys for your child.

Cleaning the room:

Children instinctively like to imitate their parents. They like to feel important. You could tear up some pieces of paper and spread them on the floor. He will enjoy himself throwing those pieces over himself like rain or snow. Then let him sweep the room clean or pick up the pieces of paper and place them in a box.

Serve a meal:

Make him feel important by letting him fix a meal for you for a change. Give him a plastic knife that is available in toy stores, some bananas and some plastic plates. Let him peel and cut the bananas into slices and shapes of his choice and arrange them in the plates and serve them. Give him a two or three light weight jugs and tumblers a bowl of some sugar and spoons. Let him pour the water from the jugs into the tumblers and stir in the sugar.
Your child will enjoy these activities and also give you time to do your work.