We have carefully curated a list of fun and entertaining activities via websites and apps to help answer that question for your family - “What’s there to do today?”
These suggestions cover a range of topics and interests, so get ready to wow your kids with this list of boredom-busters!
1. Erase All Kittens (Coding for Kids)
Website: https://eraseallkittens.com/
Cost: Free
Age: 8+
About: The perfect introduction to coding. This site brings coding alive through a sense of humour, a story line and heaps of cat gifs. Erase All Kittens describe themselves as, “A fantasy Internet Universe filled with quirky characters, strange stories, magical worlds and cute fluffy kittens, to inspire even the most reluctant technophobes!”
2. Heads Up – charades but using describing words
App: Heads Up!
Cost: Free (in-app purchases for new categories)
Age: 12+
About: A fun game for the whole family to play together. You may have heard of this app as it was created and made popular by Ellen DeGeneres. Essentially, there are different categories like Charades, except players give verbal clues rather than physical ones like traditional charades. This one is bound to bring some giggles.
3. Google Earth Games
Website: www.google.com/earth/
Cost: Free
Age: 6+
About: Launch into Google Earth and you’ll find a plethora of games to play. It’s kinda like getting outside, right? The games are under the tab ‘Voyager’. In there you will be able to play ‘match the animal sound to the animal’, go on a world quest for a villain, or take a quiz. Google Earth is a great site, giving virtual tours of major and minor landmarks. It definitely gives you a bit of perspective!
4. Stop Motion Studio
App: Stop Motion Studio
Cost: Free
Age: 12+
About: Stop Motion Studio helps you to create your own stop action movies with a whole host of unique features. Like the frame-by-frame editor, the never get lost timeline and the sound editor. You can use anything to create your stop motion – lego, fruit, drawings, clay – whatever you can imagine! There are heaps of YouTube tutorials to follow to get you started.
5. Diary Zapp
App: Diary Zapp
Cost: $8.99 (but so worth it!)
Age: 4-10
About: Diary Zapp encourages kids to journal and draw about their day, guided by their selected character. The app rewards expanding vocabulary and regular entries, boosting literacy skills and providing a way to be creative and have fun. Many reviews say that this app should be considered ‘positive screen time’ for kids.
6. Solar System with Astro Cat
App: Solar System with Astro Cat
Cost: $6.99 (but so worth it!)
Age: 7+
About: Learn all about the solar system in manageable bite-sized chunks of text, peppered with fun graphics and interactive learning exercises. Kids embark on a mission to explore and discover each planet and then testing what they’ve learnt with some fun true/false quizzes. This app is for strong readers, as it is quite text heavy as it is a digital version of a children's book written by a quantum physicist!
7. Dreamy Kid
App: Dreamy Kid
Cost: Free
Age: 5+
About: Dreamy Kid have released an entire category of free meditations for kids to support families during COVID-19 in helping kids find their inner strength and calm. Some titles include ‘Compassion’, ‘Dealing with Anger’ and ‘I am Strong’, while other meditations help aid sleep-time and gratitude.
8. Cosmic Kids Yoga
Website: https://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga
Cost: Free
Age: 3+
About: Follow along to Jaime on the YouTube channel where yoga is made to be bright, colourful and fun. The movements tell a story, while helping your little ones get stronger, calmer, and balanced.
9. Happy Colour by Numbers
App: Happy Colour by Numbers
Cost: Free
Age: 4+
About: Check out the category ‘Simple’ for some kid-friendly colour-by-numbers images! This is a super relaxing and creative activity for all ages, without hauling out all the arts and craft supplies. There are lots of images (over 6,000!) to choose from, all for free.
10. Audible
Website: https://stories.audible.com/start-listen
Cost: Free during lockdown
Age: 4+
About: You may have seen in the news that Audible have kindly unlocked hundreds of kid’s stories on their platform while schools are closed. There is something for little listeners, right through to teens. Have someone else read Winnie the Pooh this time around!
That concludes this week’s list of apps and websites to keep your kids busy. We would love to hear your suggestions and we will keep adding to this list!
