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Children made a pillow and a blanket-fortress. Children's building. Fortress made of pillows. Secret house of children. Pajama party. Children's tent made of wooden chairs and blankets. Vector
This story is part of SLM's January 2021 cover feature, with tips on riding out the rest of the pandemic. Click here for more stories from the feature.
This winter will be like a nesting doll of complications for those trying to entertain little kids: cold weather wrapped in flu season, wrapped in an epidemiologist’s nightmare. Oh, how we long for the dog days of summer, when we could fill up the kiddie pool when the 4 p.m. witching hour hit. But if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how to be resourceful. Here are four ways to entertain your kids with stuff you probably already have at home.
1. Whoopsy Goldberg: Did you panic-buy toilet paper from Costco at the start of the pandemic? Try this: Collect the empty cardboard tubes from your 30-pack and decorate them with anything you have lying around—crayons, markers, googly eyes—with your kids. Next, use painter’s tape to secure them to a wall. Start with a simple pattern, or connect the tubes for a Rube Goldberg effect. Drop pompoms, small balls, or animal figurines—whatever ya got—through the tubes and watch your child’s face light up as the object disappears briefly, only to reappear at the end of the tube. If you don’t spend 30 minutes a day dropping things and saying “bloop,” do you even have a 1-year-old?
2. B-E-A-N-G-O: Got a kids’ water table waiting out the winter in the garage? Bring that sucker in, fill it with all the dried beans you picked up in case of emergency before you realized you hated bean soup, and let the young ’uns go nuts.
3. Rock & Bowl: Ditto canned goods. What were we thinking, buying 50 cans of creamed corn? Line a few up (preferably empty ones on a carpeted surface or play mat), give the kids a ball, and let them try their hand at pandemic-hoarding bowling.
4. Couch Potato: This is 2021, so we’ve learned our lesson: A blanket fort isn’t gonna cut it. We need a blanket fortress. Here’s how you make it: Take the seat cushions off your sofa and stack them at each end of the sofa. Stack the back cushions near the front of the seat so they form a wall. Drape a bedsheet over the cushions to form a canopy. Now your kids have a comfy hideaway…and you have a place to chill out when they nap.
