Surviving the lockdown with under 5s

Liz is the mother of 3 under 5’s. She is brilliant, creative and kind. Her husband is on the front line in the NHS, here are some of her thoughts on surviving lockdown with under 5’s.

So here we are. Lockdown. Anyone else feel the walls closing in? I used to pride myself on the fact that I have never spent a day at home with my children without going out. Now that’s pretty much our only option (although I will definitely be making use of the once a day exercise clause!). I have zero qualifications in pre school childcare however I have three children under 5 (Jonah aged 4.5, Isaac aged 3 and Jude nearly 1) so have been doing this gig for a while and have some thoughts that I hope you’ll find useful. 5 tips for lockdown with under 5s. Here we go:

1.     Use what’s on offer

I don’t know about your social feeds but mine are jam packed with virtual classes at the mo – gymnastics, dance, science, PE, bread making, craft you name it there seems to be one for it. And you can take advantage of anything around the country – we did a dance class from Warrington on Friday. I’m still sussing them out, under 5s are difficult to keep engaged for any length of time but if they do nothing else they can give you some new ideas or a springboard to do some of your own stuff from. There’s also some amazing and properly qualified people sharing all sorts. My guru is @fiveminutemum. She’s a revelation. She’s written a series of blogs in the last couple of days on how to deal with all of this, her kids are 5 and 3 so she knows and her website is a gold mine of ideas. Other sites and instas worth looking at include the play at home mummas, @emma_scottchild and @otplayfortoday. I’m sure there’s millions more.

2.     Plan

You don’t have to stick to it but I find half an hour the night before thinking through what we might do and getting some resources ready a major help. At the moment I’m trying to make plans around themes. I’m doing a world week so a different country each day. So for example for Tanzania we’re going to make animal masks, I’m going to hide animals around the garden and we’ll do a treasure hunt, we’ll march to the elephant song from jungle book, we’ll bake animal biscuits and somehow pretend to climb Kilimanjaro! Or for Italy we’re going to make pizza, do some football games, do a volcano experiment, make Italian food from play dough etc etc. You get the picture. I’m also thinking of a tv shows week, space, dinosaurs, spring and vehicles as other themes. Twinkl.co.uk is free at the moment so once you’ve got a theme that’s a great place to search for ideas.

3.     Mix up the mundane

You know what held my kids attention for the longest amount of time today? Doing the hoovering. Yep. In their superhero costumes. They loved it. They also love a bit of washing up, taking the washing to the washing machine, setting the table, doing the gardening. Get them involved in what you have to do. They’re going to be at home for a long time so whilst structure is important I’m planning on changing things up – story time? Have it in different places around the house – in a den, on the kitchen floor, in an empty bath. Meals? How about a carpet picnic? You get the gist.

4.     Look after yourself

We’re in this for the long haul. Spending all your time with very small children can be mind blowingly annoying/dull/repetitive. We need to build in break times. Put the telly on for them. Set up a game and then leave them to play, in fact if they’re playing nicely on their own sneak off, sit down and have a cup of tea. Drink. We’re forever offering them drinks and food make sure you’ve got water on the go all day. And possibly wine come 6 o clock.

5.     When all else fails just add water

I think this has been the most helpful piece of advice I’ve had on looking after young children. Water can make such a difference. Water play outside is great but equally mine are very happy with a sinkful of different things to make potions with. Get them in an empty bath, give them a washing up bowl of water and get them to give their dolls a bath or their cars a wash. Use a cupcake tin, put a little toy in each hole and fill with water. Freeze. Their job is to release the toy from the frozen cage (mine love being allowed to get the hairdryer on for this) Mine were filthy this afternoon after a (failed) experiment involving food colouring so to persuade them into the bath early doors I offered them a ‘cooking bath’ – chucked a load of plastic food in, a couple of sieves and ladles and they were very happy for 40 minutes.

There’s no doubt this is going to be tough, particularly if you’re attempting to do another job as well. Best case we all have some fun eh and at least we don’t have schools sending us curriculum to get through. Worst case? They watch more telly, we drink more wine and need zoom counselling sessions with our friends. But they’ll be safe and bottom line that’s what’s most important. We can do this.