Home Education and Fun: An Idea a Day for your Family

MONDAY: Holi

Holi is the two-day Hindu festival of colours. The first day is spent doing religious rituals in front of a bonfire, and the second throwing around rainbow-coloured dry powder paint, coloured water, and water-filled balloons. Obviously, large-scale celebrations are off the agenda, but why not watch these spectacular online events from yesterday, which includes “The Magic Shawl”, a contemporary telling of the Hindu mythological story behind Holi, created and produced by Walk the Plank, played out by dancers and actors with some colourful special effects.

Alternatively, find an outdoor space and try colour-throwing? Wear white, stock up on colours or make your own, and lob them around until you’re all rainbow coloured. Find some more tips for a party here and check out the sweet, multi-hued craft ideas here

TUESDAY: Nature Art
The sunny, warm weather forecast for this weekend make it an ideal time to collect material for nature crafts. Why not search for leaves, twigs and fallen blossom to incorporate in art? It can be as simple as using petals and branches to represent trees and clouds (get inspired here) or theme your pieces using art prompts such as these bird templates . Add a twist to the concept by scanning in your finds, printing them out, and using these as a starting point for imaginative drawing.

WEDNESDAY: Lambing Time
Lambing season is truly in swing. If you live in a rural area, or are within sight of a city farm, you may have seen or heard their tiny bleats. Visits to farms to see them gambolling are off the agenda for most of us, so why not create your own adorable little balls of fluff? We love the ideas at Red Ted Art; create your lambs from cotton wool, pom-poms, socks or felt. Alternatively, bake a traditional Polish lamb cake for Easter together!

THURSDAY: April Fool
Our kids are obsessed with playing pranks, so we’re expecting the full salt-in-a-cup-of-tea, bucket-over-the-door treatment this Saturday morning, on April Fool’s Day. We’re probably not doing you any favours, but The Beano has a great archive of tricks. There’s a good compilation of gentle pranks to pull on your children here, but we’d recommend reading through these wise thoughts on whether it’s a good idea or not to fool your child first. However the morning pans out, why not take your family’s enthusiasm for the day to explore the event’s history? This funny, interesting list of classic hoaxes, could be used as a starting point for a discussion about truth and trust in the media, and ‘fake news’.

FRIDAY: Easter, Passover, Eggs and Magic
It’s a big celebratory Easter, Eostre and Passover weekend – the perfect opportunity for family time. We have some ideas for celebrations (none of which are linked to any particular religion) here, and crafts here. Even though the actual event fell a fortnight ago, these Ostara celebrations work well at this time of year too.

Our favourite Easter activity is egg rolling. Every Easter Sunday, we go to the top of a big hill and roll our decorated eggs. We used to dye our eggs with onion skins, but this has been replaced with a tradition of rendering famous people who have died that year in ovoid form. Take a few packets of salt in our back pockets and feast on the remains of the eggs, but remember to crush every bit of eggshell so witches can’t use them as boats. We have some great natural egg-dying ideas here.

What We’re Listening To This Week

How to rap about vulnerability, grief, loss and masculinity
“Mobo award winning Guvna B on changing his narrative. Born to a family of Ghanian origin on a tough London estate, Guvna B was a ‘warrior’ until the untimely death of his father. Now he writes about a culture of masculinity that turned out not to serve him so well.”

Listen here

Found something inspirational to read or listen to that you’d like to share? Want to share your creations with us? Have an idea for things to do? We’d love to hear from you. Email Kate