Ultimate Lockdown Bucket List For Parents

Lockdown lists can apply for parents too to help keep motivated and entertained whilst at home. As parents, it's important to remember to look after ourselves too during this time and it's good for our mental health and wellbeing to keep entertained at home.

We've listed ideas that parents can add to their own bucket list of things to do during lockdown. These ideas will help you make the most of being at home so you don't look back and think 'I wish I had done that!

Coronavirus will be something we will still be talking about for many years to come. Future grandchildren could have school projects set on lockdown and Covid-19. When your children have all grown up, they'll want to look back on the time we all stayed indoors. That's why we recommend keeping anything lockdown related and putting it into a memory scrapbook. If you would like some inspiration, this article on how to make a lockdown memory scrapbook is a great starting point. The following list of items would all make perfect additions to your scrapbook:

photographs

leaflets from the council or government

confetti or cards from lockdown birthday parties

news snippets from newspapers or magazines

notes and answers from your online quizzes

anything that personally reminds you of activities you've done during lockdown

Speaking of keeping memories, there's no better way to look back on memories than to look through an old album. Lockdown has given most of us lots of time to sort through photos on our phones and cameras, so why not make the most of your well organised digital photo albums and print them out to put them into albums. You could create an album specifically for lockdown to remember this unusual time.

A lovely sentimental idea to do while on lockdown is to write your children a letter for them to read when they are older. You can include anything you like in your letter. You may decide to talk about the current situation, to write them a short and relatable fictional story, or to just let them know how much you love them and how much you've enjoyed spending this extra time with them at the moment. You can then give this to them on their 18th or 21st birthday. If you do, just be sure to put plenty of tissues in the envelope for the probable tears!

Cooking and baking are brilliant activities for when you are required to stay at home. These lockdown baking ideas are perfect for you and your children to use. You may choose to teach your children a recipe that reminds you of your own childhood and begin talking about how some things were different when you were their age.

If lockdown has given you a lot more free time, then it is the perfect time to read those books you've always wanted to read. This one doesn't have to apply to just lockdown. Once you get into a good habit of reading in the evenings, it'll be easier to keep doing this once we all go back to work. You could create a checklist of all the books you want to read and then make a good start on that checklist during lockdown.

A perfect thing to do during lockdown is to help anyone in your community that needs it, ensuring you keep to the current guidelines. This could be anything, from giving your elderly neighbour who lives alone a call to see how they're doing, to getting something from the shop for people who live a few doors down and are having to work overtime at hospitals. The beauty of this time is how many of you are helping each other and instinctively reaching out to those in need.

You may also decide to use this time to redecorate your children's bedrooms. Spending the day moving your children's furniture around and repainting their walls can make their bedrooms look like new and is great physical exercise for parents! There may be other rooms in your home that you want to work on and now is a perfect time to start redecorating them.

We've mentioned how important it is for us to look after our physical and mental health during the lockdown situation. With government guidelines put in place for good reason, some of the resources that we'd normally use to keep healthy have become unavailable. Dedicating a day of learning about health resources and self-care can be hugely advantageous for during lockdown and beyond. Children don't currently have access to their P.E lessons at school and parents don't have access to gyms. These no equipment needed exercises for you and your children are a great way to keep fit and don't require any preparation or lots of space. And these 7 ways to help your wellbeing can be used to help look after your mental health.

This is a perfect time to send an email to people from your old school or university to see how they're getting on. We can get so lost in work that we forget how long it has been since we've talked to old friends or cousins that at some point in our lives meant so much to us. If it's been really long then it could be really interesting to see how they're getting on; they could have children the same age as your own children, they could have stories about your old school, they could share good resources for things to do at home. There's never any harm picking up the phone or sending an email to an old friend. An email to an old friend could also really brighten their day and boost their mental wellbeing, which is a great thing to do especially if their stay at home experience has been particularly difficult.

With the current guidelines affecting our summer plans, they've also given us time to slow down and to have a think about what really matters to us. With that in mind, this could be a good time to reflect and think about all the things you'd like to do once the stay at home guidelines are over and while your children are still young. This list could include places you want to visit and the skills you want to learn. You could start ticking off some of these items while we're at home by leaning a language for your next adventure.