Simple activities to keep your kids busy for hours

Struggling to work out how to keep your kids stimulated during isolation? Try these tasks to help keep your little ones entertained inside.

Jaden 11, Ryan 6, Lauryn 5 and Katelyn 9, keeping busy with printable drawings during the coronavirus outbreak. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Give a child a piece of paper and some crayons with the directive to “draw something,” and they might be occupied for a good five minutes.

But a printable home activity packed with doodling prompts, puzzles, hidden pictures, colouring pages or ideas for art projects can keep brains and hands busy during these difficult times, even through long afternoons that can start to feel endless.

Like home gyms and gardening, online printables are surging, with children across the country needing extra outlets for their crayons and coloured pencils while isolating at home.

The Wall family spend hours colouring in their own printed images. Picture: Tim Hunter.

While many retailers have closed due to the pandemic, office suppliers and stationers are in demand as families rummage the shelves for print consumables, from printers and ink cartridges to creative papers, including magnetic photo papers, iron-on T-Shirt transfer papers and printable nail-art papers.

Figures by Canon’s Creative Park platform, which includes a wide range of free printable activities and templates, found the number of daily downloads had increased seven times the usual average, hitting up to 1400 daily downloads this month.

Parents can find printable colourful graphics for T-Shirts at Collective Gen.

“Creative printables have really come into their own as parents look for screen-free activities to keep their kids entertained,” said Jason McLean, director consumer imaging and services at Canon Australia.

“We’ve heard of families downloading and printing free counting and alphabet learning templates on the magnetic paper so the fridge becomes a creative learning tool.

“They’re also printing out photos of family members as treasured memories or past travel pictures to keep them connected and inspired,” Mr McLean said.

The latest batch of these isolation sanity savers has a refreshing design-conscious sensibility, and — unlike Animal Jam or YouTube videos — may even end up teaching a youngster a thing or two.

Family photos can be printed easily and put on the fridge.

Creative outlets such as Pinterest offer an archive of printable illustrations and educational activities, while other websites offer free colouring stencils of favourite kids’ characters from Bluey to Frozen.

Some artists and DIY experts are also expanding printables into an art form.

Geneva Vanderzeil, founder of lifestyle website Collective Gen, creates personalised cards, gift tags and colourful graphics that can be printed onto T-Shirts — an ideal gift to make at home this Mother’s Day.

“Printables are the perfect short-cut for those who think creativity doesn’t come naturally to them,” Ms Vanderzeil said. “It gives you a framework to start with.

“I’ve stretched my daughter’s learning by making printable games she can enjoy and grow into, like printing photos of people who are familiar to her and presenting words that describe the scenes in the image.”

Kids can make wall art with their favourite pictures.

Gemma Wall is among many parents looking to entertain her kids Jaden, 11, Kaitlyn, 9, Ryan, 6, and Lauryn, 5, while in isolation.

She believes any printable activity that includes popular characters is an activity no child can resist.

“My kids love to choose characters they’re familiar with and colour them in using the correct colours,” she said. “When they’re finished, they cut out the pictures and stick them on their bedroom walls.

“It’s a quiet yet creative activity which keeps them occupied while I’m cooking, and they’re getting neater too, so all the colouring practice is doing them some good.”

■ For kids, visit Pinterest, Essential Kids, Aussie Childcare Network or Kidspot websites to find printable projects and child-related resources.

■ Crayola also provides printable colouring-book pages, alphabets and a swag of other child-themed projects. See crayola.com.au

■ ABC Kids has printable colouring-in pages of all your kids’ favourite ABC characters at abc.net.au

■ Your photos aren’t forgotten, either (for the fridge, right) Find printable photo frames and other photo-craft projects to download, as well as instructions for use, at Canon Creative Park: creativepark.canon

Originally published as Simple activities to keep your kids busy for hours