We spent most of your time at Home.

13 most beautiful ideas at Home:

We can make great things or design games from many things we already have at home. And for some ideas, all you need is paper, pens, and imagination!

Twister reloaded

Do you know Twister? Right?! .This super fun-moving game works similar to Twister. Except that all you need is paper, a pen, and tape.

First, you draw the outlines of your hands and feet four times each on a sheet (only one outline per sheet, i.e., in the end, you have four sheets with the outline of the left foot, four sheets with the outline of the right foot, four sheets with the outline of the left hand and four sheets with the outline of the right hand).

Next, permanently fasten three pieces of paper in a row on the ground. Make sure that no body part occurs twice in a row (i.e., the right hand is not twice in a row).

Glue all the pieces of paper in three rows behind each other. The game aims to cover all the pieces of paper in a row and get to the opposite side as quickly as possible. In the video, I show you exactly what it should look like:

Make friendship bracelets and cable protectors

Another great and very easy thing you can do at home is knotting. All you need is a bit of wool and a piece of cardboard, depending on the knotting technique. Various techniques can be used to conjure up great ribbons that you or your children can later give to friends.

And if you want to do something good for your charging cable, you can also create a stylish cable protector by knotting it. In the video, I show you 2 different knotting techniques and also how you can tie a cable saver:

Weaving

And speaking of wool: You know that you can make your own loom super quickly and easily from an old shoebox?

All you have to do is turn the lid over and make incisions at regular intervals at the top and bottom, and then stretch string into them. The homemade loom is ready, and children can weave small blankets, scarves or carpets!

Make dough yourself

When nothing works at home anymore, homemade play dough is often our last resort: Make play dough for toddlers yourself. There are many different recipes on the web. I have two here on the blog that I am very happy with:

• Play dough mug recipe (with cream of tartar)
• Our standard recipe for toddler clay (without cream of tartar)
• Children can help with the production of the mug recipe.

Both recipes are of course suitable for small children, as the clay contains only non-toxic ingredients. Note, however, that it is of course not advisable to eat large amounts of the play dough, as it contains a lot of salt.

Make and model salt dough yourself

Salt dough is just perfect when you want to combine kneading with making something permanent. We always use the following recipe, which, due to the addition of oil and starch, tears significantly less and is more supple:

Ingredients:

• 250 g flour
• 250 grams of salt
• 1 tbsp oil
• 60 g cornstarch
• 200 to 250 ml of water

Instructions:

Place all dry ingredients in a large bowl (flour, salt, and starch). Then add the water and oil.

Mix and knead everything until you get a smooth dough. You can now let the dough rest for a few hours, but this is not absolutely necessary.

Use the dough to create what you want: Salt dough food for the play kitchen? Follower? Door signs? Handprints? Everything is possible! Make sure that the flour is not rolled out too thinly or that the modeled figures are not too filigree (then there is a high risk that it will break and break quickly).

Sort the designed objects by thickness and size. Always only bake things that are somewhat the same thickness/size or make sure to get smaller parts out of the oven earlier.

Bake everything at 50° for 30 minutes. Then increase the temperature to 150° and bake the parts for 1 to 2 hours – depending on the thickness. Let everything cool down. Paint your creations with ink or acrylic paint.

Rainbow Rice

Honestly: If you had told me a few years ago that colored rice could be THE thing for children, I would have probably given it a fuck… But now I’m a mom myself and I know: Children often love simple things the most. But of course only the ones with which you can cause a lot of chaos!😀

And during the Corona crisis, colored rice has already saved us many a dull afternoon in the house. All you need for a decent batch of colored rice is rice (oh ;D ), food coloring, some vinegar and containers for mixing (be smarter than me and do our environment another favor by using reusable cans instead of disposable bags 😉).

A cup of rice is now placed in the container with a teaspoon of vinegar and a dash of food coloring (as needed, more color = more intense result); everything is shaken well (until the color is evenly distributed) and then it is best to leave it all overnight rest.

If the color is dry, you can play with the rice without it coloring – but only with dry hands. If the rice gets wet, the color will come off.

And no, it hardly smells like vinegar. The smell is so light that you hardly notice it (at least that’s how it was for us).

Freeze characters for slide fun

Did you know that you can suddenly make boring toys interesting again using a simple trick?

• The trick is:
• Get in the water and freeze!😀
• Sounds weird? It is😀

But it works! I have frozen many, many characters here and when I take them out of the freezer, the child is always fascinated. You can vary whether you freeze the figures completely or use more or less water.

For example, I just froze the legs of the penguins here and then we had an ice race where you had to blow the penguins away with a straw.

Activity ideas for children of all ages

When you have not just one child at home but several, it is often a balancing act to find activities that are fun for all family members. Here are a few ideas that will bring joy to both younger and older children during Corona quarantine and social distancing.

Of course, you still have to keep an eye on the different needs and there is always a certain age limit (teenagers and babies simply have too different interests 😉).

Make your own slime

It has been absolutely trendy for a few years:

The slime.

non-toxic slime without glue 2 recipes. There are countless recipes for this on the internet.

I limited myself to those that are non-toxic and are therefore also suitable for younger children who quickly put something (or their own fingers 😉) in their mouths. Nevertheless, of course, older children also have fun with this slime and can keep it busy for longer. You can find two recipes for non-toxic slime here.

Adhesive film images

For this activity, you’ll need some cling film (the kind of film you wrap books in, which is transparent and only sticks on one side) and tape to hold it in place.

The adhesive foil is now glued to a window with the adhesive tape – very important! – with the adhesive side into the room. So please don’t just stick the film on the window, then this activity won’t work😉. Now prepare a large bowl with different materials and the children can stick them on the foil.

Smaller children usually have fun just looking at what is sticking and distributing everything wildly on the foil; you can give larger children the task of gluing a mandala or other shapes (if they don’t already have enough ideas of their own).

We left our adhesive foil hanging for several days and our son kept playing with it (he was almost 3.5 years old at the time). Good point is that you can easily remove many materials (such as buttons, paper clips, etc.) and the film continues to stick. So you can always create new pictures.

Make flowers out of toilet paper rolls

This DIY idea is basically a little better suited for older children, but even the little ones can help a lot and take over individual steps (cutting or painting). And it is made of a material that many people in the Corona crisis should have in abundance:

toilet rolls!

The flowers are designed by cutting an empty toilet roll into small rings and then gluing several rings together at a point. At the end you glue the first ring to the last one to make a flower.

In winter we make winter flowers and snowflakes like this, in summer, you can use them to create wonderfully colorful spring or summer flowers. Folding paper 3 times made it easy.

If you have nice, colorful paper around the house, you can use it for crafts that can take a little longer (at least for older children who have some stamina).

Simple paper flowers

The classic is of course flowers. You can find countless instructions on the internet – some of which already require finger acrobatics, which is too high even for me😀. So here are two ideas on how to make paper flowers really easy to fold:

Flat paper flowers

A bit more complex are these flowers, which are not plastic and which you can therefore also send by post:

Fold butterflies

If you’re tired of flowers, try these cute butterflies!. They are folded from a square sheet of paper (e.g. origami paper) and look a lot more elaborate than they are!

The amazing effect comes from unfolding the corners before folding the accordion (okay, I guess you’ll only understand that if you watch the video 😀):