What if you set up a cabin with blankets and sheets where you can read stories?
Fifth day of quarantine and you don't know what to do with the kids? Celia G. Puche , graphic designer and web page programmer, tells us from the blog Estación Bambalina '70 easy ideas to play with the family inside the house' . In addition, as a mother of 4 children –one of them a baby– and a teleworker, she tells us some clues to make this exceptional situation more bearable.
Let's start with the most important: Let's avoid chaos and bring order. "Let's not make the mistake of staying in pajamas all day as it can happen to us on a Sunday. You have to wash, dress and organize the house; let's do some sport watching a video and then let's play!”, recommends Celia to Traveler.es
In all likelihood, these days you have used the most popular resources, such as make a cake or rescue a board game, but the creativity of the author of Estación Bambalina goes much further and she proposes more entertaining challenges, like dubbing a movie. To do it, you have to play any scene from any movie without sound and put, “If the dialogue is a bit absurd, better”, advises Celia.
70 easy ideas to play with a child inside the house
Record a radio show, with gathering and musical session included, write your family tree reproducing your family tree as far as you can go with paper and pencil or set up a cabin, with fabrics and blankets to tell stories and eat snacks, are other fun activities that Celia suggests us to make quarantine as enjoyable as possible.
“I am aware that the list falls short, we also include them in housework and then they play a lot of Lego, Playmobil and yes, we pull Netflix”, adds this super mom with a laugh. So, Do not feel guilty if your children are also spending more hours than usual in front of the screens these days.
Also, if we want to work without a thousand interruptions, that is the star solution, "It's almost better to put on a movie for them and make the most of that time and then be with them and disconnect from work," says Celia. Another star trick is to relieve you with your partner, in case she is also teleworking.
Do not feel guilty if your children are also spending more hours than usual in front of screens these days
"It's okay to do things and stay active but It is also important to stop even if we are at home, breathe, look at each other and even get bored” warns us the graphic designer and web page programmer.
And she also invites us to think that: “all of this will teach us to stop, to listen to ourselves, to take care of ourselves, to appreciate what we have, to realize how important public goods are (health, science...), to understand that teleworking is possible in many jobs, to think of others, to value a hug, to consider that otherwise we would not have stopped emissions, to consume with much more head, to self-regulate with our children after so many hours without interruption…”
Celia insists: “Reconnecting with your loved ones is necessary. The frenetic rhythm does not let us see and see each other and as much as they have told us or we have heard it, we never take it quite seriously, until there is no other. And it's actually what gives meaning to everything."
And for the moments when you have to lift your spirits: let's dance!
And for the moments in which you have to lift your spirits, which there are and will be, well, the usual remedies: music, dance and sing! And among the 70 ideas of Estación Bambalina, we will find everything, from inventing a song to doing a karaoke –no matter what mic you have on hand– going through a choreography with the hottest song of the moment.
Perhaps many of you are still in that point where you don't know if you have to tell the children everything that is happening and how. Celia is clear about it, especially with regard to the elderly, and she specifies: “we have told them normally, in fact they have been found out at the same time as us, because as my partner and I found out, they listened to it, but I always try to be careful to choose the words they hear so as not to alarm them.”
Lastly, we asked: "What will be the first thing you do when we can return to our normality?" And the author of Estación Bambalina has answered us: “Meeting with family and friends and hugging each other!”
And you? Have you thought about what you're going to do when we can go back out on the street?
Celia G. Puche: graphic designer, web page programmer and mother!