By Catherine Hume
Last month I encouraged you to wrap up warm and have adventures with your children outdoors in the winter weather. This month, I’m going to say the opposite. Stay indoors! There are many adventures to be hand in your own home.
RADIO
We are lucky that a television set and a computer/laptop no longer just show television programmes or compute and word process. Today, televisions and computers give us access to radio stations that our radios themselves cannot pick up. With a few taps into a search engine or clicks on our television remote controls, we can listen to music from other continents, we can listen to stories and we can also listen to lesser-known bands on specialist radio stations. The world of radio can be an adventure in itself, transporting you to another time and place. Switch on a non-mainstream radio station and then you are ready to take things to the next level!
ARTS & CRAFTS
Get out the arts and crafts box. Paints, glue, fabric, foil, pencils, paper and beads. Get out the colouring books. Clear away some space so that your child can dance.
Children love music and they love to dance or move to music, and it’s great for developing their motor skills and memory skills. Children love to do arts and crafts because children are naturally creative.
Holding a pencil or a paint brush helps children to develop their fine motor skills. Studies have shown that there is a link between art and resilience in a child. Art also helps a child to develop analytical and problem solving skills as they make decisions about what they are going to paint next and which colours to use. Overall, creating something boosts a child’s self esteem and confidence.
DENS & FORTS
Put out some bedsheets, towels, chairs and clothes racks and let your child play with action figures or dolls and make a den. Let them make up their own stories about where they are and what they are doing there – exploring, carrying out a rescue mission, being parents or holding a tea party. Your child can create adventures that would make most writers’ heads spin.
Many people reading this will have fond memories from their own childhood of making dens, making up your own stories and doing arts and crafts at home. It’s cheap, it’s simple, but the real beauty is anyone can do this.
Go and have adventures!
Catherine Hume is a social care worker specialising in mental health who also writes in her spare time. Some of her fiction can be found at http://catherinehume.wordpress.com.
