5 things to photograph your young kids doing this lockdown
Stuck for ideas of what to do with your little one at the moment? Read on to hear all about the best toddler lockdown activities I’ve done this lockdown with my two boys.
This post is part of a two-part series written in collaboration with an incredible photographer in Milton Keynes, Capture the Light Photography. You can read 5 things to photograph your older kids doing during lockdown over on her blog!
The trouble with lockdown is it starts to feel like Groundhog Day. You do the same things, over and over, and it’s hard to plan things in the more medium term either, because the best laid plans are currently being torn up into tiny pieces and then recycled into rolls to overcome the Great Toilet Paper Shortage.
My boys are small, but they’re bored of being photographed to the point of being very uncooperative in the studio! I now have to be a bit more creative if I want to get them in front of the lens. So here are five ideas of photos you could take this lockdown – five fun toddler lockdown activities to do with your children which can also double up as five great opportunities to keep adding to their annual photobooks.
1. Energy rules the world!
I studied physics at university, and one of my favourite concepts was that of entropy, which is a fancy way of saying chaos and disorder. And the laws of physics say that as we go forward in time, entropy (and the degree of chaos and disorder) can only ever increase.
That might go some way to explaining why kids love to do crazy things!And they love it more when we encourage them to do them! Can a 2 year old bounce on your bed like it’s a trampoline? You bet they can!
How about doing the world’s biggest jump into (the world’s smallest) muddy puddle – it’s a great one for those Peppa Pig fans out there! Or set up an airbed or mattress, and let your bundle of energy literally throw themselves straight into it. I guarantee you they will crumple to the floor…but in fits of giggles!
Other ideas I love are playing peekaboo over the back of the sofa, or chasing your children around the kitchen island, footstool, any piece of sizeable furniture really. If you can impersonate some sort of fantasy creature – a cookie monster, a tickle tyrant or the toothbrush fairy – even better!
2. Creative toddler lockdown activities…
My elder son won’t touch anything that will have the slightest chance of dirtying his fingers, whereas with my youngest I find that the messier something is, the more he enjoys it. This is a child that faceplanted into his cake during his first birthday cake smash! So it’s all about finding the right creative activity.
With Lewis, we picked some tiny flowers from the garden, placed them in silicon cupcake cases and then filled them up with water. A few hours in the freezer later and we had some beautiful ice art that he was fascinated by.
Top tip: it would have been better to use bottled water for truly clear ice sculptures, or perhaps a small amount of food colouring would be a fun addition too.
For Matty, finger painting is a huge success – at just over a year old, he loves pointing at things anyway, so getting to point into the paint and then make a huge mess is pretty much his definition of fun. Lewis is happier using brushes and potato stamps!
It’s also fun to provide your kids with a random assortment of craft-type objects and see what they do! My younger son definitely gets a little more “free play” than his older brother did at the same age, but it’s actually really interesting to see how he plays with toys in ways I’d never even have thought of. For example, we have an Oball rainstick but instead of playing with it like a ball or a rainstick, he likes to balance smaller balls in the mesh, or post things into the centre.
So offer up an assortment of goodies, and sit back to enjoy what your little ones decide to do with them! Also known as “create your own toddler lockdown activities!”
3. Having fun with food
At the end of a long day’s play, show me the child that isn’t hungry! My boys have both always been munching machines, so games and activities that involve food usually go down an absolute treat.
At breakfast-time, one toddler activity I love, perfect for the extra time we have in lockdown, is food art. (Don’t worry, it’s not a giant food fight!) You just need some American-style pancakes, and some thin pieces of fruit, such as apple slices, plus some cookie cutters or even playdough cutters. Then let your little ones select the cutter of their choice and use it to create fruit or pancake shapes. (Just make sure if you’re using playdoh cutters that they’ve had a good wash!)
If you’re feeling more adventurous or your children are a little bit older, you can also use circular slices of fruit such as bananas or kiwi to create actual fruit pictures. It’s really easy to do this for seasonal festivities too, such as Christmas (think kiwi Christmas tree) and Easter (Easter bunny pancakes!).
Later in the day and looking for a snack for those ravenous kids? One of my favourite activities as a child was baking. Cookies, cupcakes…you name it, I loved making it – and eating it! And it makes the perfect toddler lockdown activity too. This is the perfect chocolate cookie recipe you can see being made below!
The beauty of these simple sorts of recipes is even little toddlers can get involved with stirring the batter or turning the stand mixture on and off, or even using a cookie cutter on the dough. And they get the satisfaction of seeing how they turn out too, before the grand finale – the taste test!
All that baking is hungry work though, so you’ll want some dinner ideas too. When I was in primary school, a really popular birthday party was a “Pizza Hut Party” where we all piled into the kitchen at our local pizza parlour and created our own perfect pizzas. The good news is: this is another easy, and satisfying, lockdown activity you can try at home with your toddler!
All good supermarkets these days sell ready made pizza bases (or of course you could make your own if you’re feeling particularly like a domestic goddess – and hats off to you, during this homeschooling/pandemic chaos!).My two year old absolutely loves squeezing the tomato puree out of the tube and smooshing it around the base with a spoon, before dolloping a generous helping of mozzarella on top.
Then it’s time to get creative with the toppings! Favourites in our house are pineapple, peppers and sweetcorn, plus little chunks of chicken, and sometimes a little smear of pesto to really liven things up. A short bake later, and you have a dinner that even the fussiest kid can’t refuse!
4. Something in nature
You know when it’s grey and cold outside, and you just want to hibernate? Toddlers don’t get that feeling! It doesn’t matter if it’s icy underfoot or dark overhead, my 2 year old pretty much always wants to go out into the garden, or in search of muddy puddles! But the great outdoors offers up new opportunities for entertainment too!Something we love doing in the Carpenter household is a scavenger hunt, and it’s also a great tactic to fall back on when the toddler has decided he can’t walk another step. “Shall we see if we can find a big puddle to jump in?”
Obviously it’s helpful to choose the things you’re looking for based on what you’re likely to find where you live – you might struggle for blackberries in an inner-city neighbourhood, whereas a double decker bus isn’t a common sight in the countryside on the Herts-Essex border!
But just pick a handful of things you know you’re likely to see, and either give your little one a written list, a picture list or just ask them verbally to find each thing depending on their age. The perfect toddler lockdown activity, and all you needed was paper and a pen or pencil. Bonus points if you can make it to the end without losing the writing implement!
Another top tip is to invest in a couple of small but exciting props, such as a magnifying glass or a pocket torch – there’s an explorer in every child just waiting to get out!
And finally, if you need help explaining your toddler lockdown activity to your little one, there’s an episode of Peppa Pig where they go on a train ride and have to check off different things on their worksheet. That’s perfectly justified screen time to my mind, that also has the added bonus of giving you time to go to the bathroom by yourself, or whatever counts as a luxury for you these days!