Entertaining Kids At Home with Internet
Feeling tired? Overwhelmed? Demotivated? You are not alone! 2021 is the year of hope for most of us. But before the hope to get back to normality comes to life, we have to live through the tough winter. National lockdown, homeschooling, and general tiredness from the pandemic adds to the usual grey and cold weather and struggling to get back to working routine after holidays.
For our family, the last couple of weeks have been extra tough as the baby boy has decided to stop sleeping at night. I reduced my life to sleeping as much as I can, cuddles with my little ones, and a cup of coffee in the morning. (I do love coffee that much!).
I want to share with you some internet resources for kids, that helped me get through the spring lockdown 2020 while juggling work, looking after my toddler daughter, and being heavily pregnant.
Cosmic yoga
These youtube yoga classes are mostly short, around 15-20 mins. They follow a little story and every move is made into fun by giving it a meaning. The classes would be interesting for a wide age range and even I enjoyed doing them as an adult. My daughter, two and a half years old at the time, absolutely loved them! She wanted to do at least two in a row and asked about them every single day. She wouldn’t necessarily do every move together with the teacher, but she surely watched and remembered. She started using phrases from the stories (they are very catchy!) and doing yoga moves in everyday life at random moments. I am a yoga lover myself and I was absolutely excited to see her so captivated by it! The exercise level is fairly simple, it’s for kids after all! And I enjoyed doing some stretching and moving a bit together with my girl. Here are a few of our favourites:
Bach to baby concerts
I mentioned Bach to Baby Christmas concert in my recent post about Christmas performances, but it definitely deserves another mentioning. The concerts are made for children and aim to make classical music accessible and easy to listen to. They also educate children about musical instruments. The performers are the best in UK and even in the world musicians. The concerts are made fun by presenters and nursery rhymes. Our favourite presenter is Carl. My daughter asks about him all the time. He brings such joy to the concerts!
I use the concerts when I don’t have the energy to be present and play with my daughter. She loves music and dances along! I also enjoy the music myself. On rainy weekend days, we watch the concerts as a family to make our days more special. The concerts are available on catch up and cost £5. It’s fun to watch live too, but we resorted to catch-up mode as it made our schedule more flexible. Here are a few of our favourites:
My Celtic Heart - harp concert (daughter’s favourite)
Paris, je t'aime! - Bartosz Glowacki, accordion (Mommy’s favourite and Carl presenting)
Lingotot zoom classes
Lingotot is a language learning franchise. It offers several languages and there are many teachers across the UK. We have been doing French classes since my daughter was two. And with the pandemic, the classes have moved on zoom.
Learning another language has an amazing impact on brain development. We also treat the classes as a bit of fun learning together with my daughter. But the classes have so much more to offer than just a new language! There are singing and dancing, memory and attention games, story reading, and also a simple craft to take away. Our teacher is fantastic! She is the best children teacher I ever met and she makes the classes so fun that both myself and my daughter can’t wait for them every week! I hope by the time we feel safe to travel again we can be good enough with our French to do a family trip to France and practice.
Busy Lizzy classes
Busy Lizzy offers a wide variety of classes from pregnancy to baby classes and postnatal recovery. I joined Busy Lizzy this autumn to do baby classes with my boy from the comfort of our home. There is a membership option for £20 per month with unlimited access to online classes. I say this is a pretty good deal!
There are all kinds of classes for babies: singing, massage, yoga, music. There are also postnatal classes for moms, talks on parenting topics, and a mini disco for toddlers. My favourites are baby yoga with my boy (he sooo enjoys it!) and mini disco with my daughter. I am so glad I have a chance to do the classes with my boy while he is spending the first year of his life at home!
I hope you will find these resources useful! What are your go-to internet resources to entertain kids at home?