twolittleajs: 16 ways to entertain children when you are ill!

Tuesday, 27 August 2013

16 ways to entertain children when you are ill!

There are times when you are ill, but still have an energetic toddler to deal with and you don't know what to do. This has been me the last two days, after a night of sickness, there was no way I was able to run around the following day. So it got me thinking of different ways to keep Arthur amused whilst lying on the sofa/bed, I also thought that some of these could be useful to mums breastfeeding a younger child.

So here we go.

1. Mummy says (like Simon says)
2. Dancing and musical statues, only energy needed is pushing pause on the remote
3. Doctors and patient, be prepared to have a spoon of medicine forced into your mouth
4. Hairdressers, I used a baby brush for less chance of snagging/tearing/tangling hair
5. Fetch, burn off some of that excess energy by simply getting them to chase after a ball and bring it back, you can even make it more fun by getting them to pretend to be a dog and bark and do it on all fours.
6. Set up a tent / den with lots of cushions and lie down and read
7. Have special colouring books, magazines (ours are a collection of Cbeebies mags that nanny buys) that only come out when you are tired/poorly
8. Sofa peekaboo, lie down on the sofa and get your little one to hide and pop up from various points of the sofa
9. kiddie board games, card games, jigsaw puzzles
10. Play dough
11. Activity dices, (obviously best made before hand, if not just write on scraps of paper in two bowls!) one dice says and action, one says a body part ie wiggle + fingers
12. Hide small toys deep in a ball pool and get them to rummage and find them all
13. Finger/hand puppets
14. Song sack ( bag full of small toys relating to nursery rhymes, if your up for singing/noise!)
15. Play cook, use a play kitchen and get them to make you food
16. Give up and call the grand parents!!