Schools may be turning online for a few hours every day, but what do you do with the remaining hours? Here are a few resources to keep your kids engaged
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As we enter another week of the lockdown, parents are dealing with children around them 24/7 with no respite and no end to their boundless energy. I speak from experience. There are, however, some online resources that can help you direct this energy towards something more positive, may be even give you that 10 minutes of peace you so desperately deserve.
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Explore
Just because you are stuck at home doesn't mean you can't visit sites around the world like the Pyramids of Giza or the Eiffel Tower. Google Earth has nice ground views of the famous places around the world. If you want to visit and learn how a farm works, there's a 360-degree farming site that will tell you everything you need to know. You can even visit the zoo or the Louvre in Paris. If you don't want to be earth bound, go visit the International Space station or explore Mars.
Links
Visit Mars: bit.ly/smdmars
Visit the Louvre: bit.ly/smdlouvre
Visit a Farm: bit.ly/smdfarm
Explore Earth: bit.ly/smdearth
Live Zoo Cameras: bit.ly/smdzoo1
Visit the Space Station: go.nasa.gov/smdiss
Story Time
Reading to your child is great when it is done once, may be twice a day, but with nothing to do, your child can expect story time all the time. Fortunately, there are a number of resources that can read stories to your child. Audible by Amazon has a great collection of children's audio books read by famous people. Save with Stories has actors reading out books on video, while #operationstorytime has authors reading their books instead. If you want something more extra-terrestrial then check out Story Time from Space, where astronauts read books.
Links
Audible: amzn.to/smdaudi
Savewithstories: bit.ly/smdswstory
Story Time from Space: storytimefromspace.com
Operation Story time: Youtube: bit.ly/smdostyt
Cooking
Cooking is both therapeutic and an essential life skill. It is a great activity to gets kids involved in. Several sites that share recipes and general food content have specific sections for things you can make with your kids.
Links
Food Network: bit.ly/smdfoodnet
Delish: bit.ly/smddelish
Americas Test Kitchen: bit.ly/smdatk
Jamie Oliver: bit.ly/smdjamie
All Recipes: armagazine.com/smdkid
BBC Good Food: bit.ly/smdbbcgf
Exercise
An important part of getting your children ready for sleep is getting them tired. This is easier said than done. For smaller kids, Cosmic Yoga and Little Sports work well. Older kids, however, might be more interested in P.E. with Joe or a daily dance party with DJ Mels live stream.
Links
Dj Mels Dance Party: bit.ly/smddjmel
Cosmic Kids Yoga: bit.ly/smdcosmic
P.E with Joe: bit.ly/smdpejoe
Little Sports: bit.ly/smdlilsports
Arts and Crafts
Arts and crafts from materials that can be recycled or just lying around could be another way to keep the kids busy. The links shared include a lot of arts and crafts ideas you can do with your kids, some like Nasa Kids and Whatsup Moms also have other activities included on the same page.
Links
Crayola: bit.ly/smdcray
Arty Crafty kids bit.ly/smdarty
Happiness is Homemade: bit.ly/smdhappy
Whatsup Moms: whatsupmoms.com Parents.com bit.ly/smdparents
Code
This is as good a time as any for kids to learn some coding. There are several ways you can do this. Apple Swift Playground teaches kids how to programme for Apple devices. It runs on the iPad and the Mac, which is great. Scratch is another great tool to learn logical thinking, since it focuses on logic rather than coding, making it perfect to teach any kid that can read. You can run this from a browser, a low-powered Linux machine or from your PC.
Links
Swift Playgrounds: www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/
Scratch: scratch.mit.edu
Apple accidentally leaks new product
Apple accidentally leaked a new product on a YouTube video on its support channel. The video, first noticed by blog Appleosophy, was a tutorial about erasing iPhone data, but a Settings screen in the video showed the ability to find things offline using AirTags. Yet to be confirmed by Apple, AirTags is meant to help users find missing items using sound and tracking technology. The video has been taken down.
Doom Eternal
Doom Eternal is spectacular. It is just as fast paced as its predecessors and is loaded with demons of all shapes, sizes and difficulty levels. It also ramps up the difficulty pretty quickly to an adrenalin-packed blood bath. The metal music and the amazing array of weapons are the icing on the cake. If you are comfortable with gore and fast paced action, you should definitely get this game.
Rating: 4.5/5
Developer: id Software
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: PC, PS4, XBO
Price: Rs 3,999
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