Five ways to make staying home lively for kids

Experts agree that play has a profound impact on childhood learning and advocate that schools incorporate a healthy playtime for children into educational routines.

The foundation for such a widely shared belief follows that play doubles as a time when children interact with and accord relevance to the world around them.

With many schools on lockdown and children at home as the world continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, parents may be running out of ideas for playtime.

The Google Assistant offers a variety of ways to tap into your ward’s daily routine and monitor their exposure to the internet while they are at home.

By using the Family Link app from Google, parents could stay in the loop as children explore on their devices. Here are a few ways to play with your kids.

Start with questions

There are so many questions your child can ask Google Assistant just to get acquainted. While it is known to answer lots of voice command queries, it also has a humorous side that makes it fun.

You could ask the Google Assistant: “Can you sing?”, “Do you have children?”, “What do you like to eat?”, “What are you wearing?” and “Can you beatbox?” for some family entertainment.

Play Games

With Google Assistant, you can get kids to start playing fun games. Simply ask it to show you game options for kids. For example, you could try out ‘Mad Libs’ where they can start a word game.

Other fun games include ‘Santa Quiz: A Santa Trivia Game’, ‘Multiplication Test’, ‘Peppa Pig quiz’, ‘Disney Z’, ‘Kids Court’. These games allow for learning while they are played.

Listen to a story

You could also let your assistant tell your children stories. They can listen to interactive stories from a variety of story options like Frozen Stories where the kids join Elsa, Anna, Olaf, and Kristoff around the campfire as they tell legends exploring the world of ‘Frozen 2’.

There is also Strangest Day Ever, where children get to travel back in time or meet an a-‘moo’-sing alien and Smart StoryTeller that teaches moral lessons.

Get a riddle

Riddles during playtime can be so much fun for your kids. By asking the Google Assistant to tell you a riddle, you get a riddle and the answer follows.

Riddles come up and you can always request one more to keep the fun going like “What has a lot of keys but can’t open any doors?” and “What’s harder to catch the faster you run?”

Get interesting facts

By asking the Google Assistant to share an interesting fact, you could immediately get one like the fact that camels do not store water in their humps, though many people think so.

There’s also that the national anthem of Greece is the longest in the world or that strawberries are not actually berries but bananas and tomatoes are.