Over the course of the school holidays here in New Zealand, we have been sharing with you over on Instagram and Facebook, lots of great activities that you can do with your neurodiverse kids.
Kids with neurodiversity have super active, inquisitive brains and they like to be kept busy. But you probably already know that with the thousands of questions per hour, the “what are we doing now?” question coming at you all day long, or if you have older kids, you just don’t see them as they slip into the vortex that is YouTube!
So, we’ve got some great activities that you can do with younger kids and some great things for older kids to do on their own.
All of them are free and easy to do.
So, below we’ve put the links to all the activities that we have been talking about on Instagram and Facebook. If you haven’t already seen the posts, go and have a look and give us a follow whilst you are there – we’d love to see you.
Geocashing – is a really fun activity for all the family. It’s like a world wide treasure hunt and all you need is the free app. Don’t forget to take some small treasures to leave in the little pots you find and a pencil.
Making Slime – this one is a family favourite! Well as long as they don’t get it on the sofa it is! This recipe is one that has ingredients that are usually in your store cupboard, no having to go and search out borax or the right kind of contact lens solution from the shops!
DIY.org – This fabulous website is free to join until the end of August 2021. It really is like Scouts but online. There are over 100 “badges” that kids can work towards – everything from dancing to baking to den building. The website will give them a variety of tasks to perform to gain the badge. The kids go off and do all the things they need to do – sometimes with a bit of help! – take a photo or video of themselves doing it, or of the end product and then when they are approved they achieve the badge.
It’s suitable for all ages and is something you can work on for years. When I was living in the hot hot world of the Middle East, this website was an absolute life saver. The kids couldn’t really leave the house, but they still had plenty to keep them occupied thanks to DIY.org, so I highly recommend this one.
Imagineering – The Khan Academy in conjunction with Disney have put together an amazing programme called Imagineering in a Box. It is an eye opening online programme that takes kids through all the jobs and skills involved in building a Disney theme park. In the process the kids build their own theme park too – this one looks like so much fun I want to do it myself!
Doodling – This great activity is fun for everyone. Mo Willem has a great sense of humour and his calm and peaceful way of being will keep the kids engaged and giving drawing a go. Watch Mo on his YouTube channel.
Visit the V&A – Visiting the V & A Museum in London, in real life, is an amazing experience. However they also now have an womderful online facility so that their collections can be much more widely viewed. The collections that they have available to view online is eclectic and diverse. Everything from watercolours, to sculpture to tapestry. But they also have a huge collection of fashion, shoes, jewellery and so much more. It’s well worth a visit to their archive for a poke around!
Play Minecraft – If you’ve got kids you’ve probably heard of Minecraft! Minecraft is actually an amazing platform within which kids can learn so much, building, creating, resourcefulness, disappointment, social community building, it really is great for all of them.
Minecraft Education takes it up a step with purposeful learning in a platform that feels like fun, like real fun. Even my 14 year old loves it! Minecraft Education are offering an hour long coding module for free on their platform.
If your kids are into computers, this is a great way to get them really engaged with it
