Discover our tips to channel your kids’ energy when you’re all at home in isolation.

1. FaceTime with the family

Make the most of your phone – and it doesn’t just have to be a chat, because we know how quickly little ones can get bored. Rope in a granny, an uncle or a sister-in-law to entertain your kids for ten minutes.

Grandparents can do story time, maybe you’ve got the same book so they can both turn the pages at the same time. Or, they can just make a story up.

Try playing ‘can you find me?’ You ask for something red, or something that’s round and your children hunt around the place to find it. Keep score, then declare a winner (or all of them can be winners – we need to keep disputes to a minimum!).

2. Make some playdough

It’s so easy, and you might well have all the ingredients already. https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/playdough-recipe

Older children will like making and mixing the different colours. The younger ones will love playing with the results.

3. Build a den

Gather all the den building equipment from around your house – we’re talking duvets, pillows, blankets – the whole lot! Maybe you’ve got some old cardboard boxes? The more imaginative the better!

4. Have a film session

Don’t be afraid to turn on the telly (or tablet). Grab your duvet, dim the lights and choose a film. Eat your lunch or tea while you watch. BBC iPlayer and All 4 have got some great films online.

5. An exercise class

Yes you heard us right. Get your kids to burn some energy and put them in charge of hosting an exercise class for the family – we’re thinking star jumps, hopping and balancing on one foot for the younger ones, older children can pull out some more advanced moves. YouTube will be able to show you ideas that are a good fit for your childrens’ ages, including a PE lesson every morning at 9 am with Joe Wicks (The Body Coach).

6. Have a routine

Get it sorted out, scribbled on a piece of paper and stuck on the wall so everyone knows what’s coming. It can be comforting to have structure, like school, rather than the days merging in to one.

Add on when meal times will be and when you’re going to be doing different activities. You can also include 30 mins of cleaning time each day when everyone in the family pitches in to help out. Pop things like their favourite programme on the list too and if you’ve got one of their favourite foods for tea, jot that down as well!

7. Cut everyone some slack

Let’s be realistic, even your best mate would get on your nerves after a few days of 24/7 contact. So let the little things go. Yep, this is the time when no one mentions the toilet seat being up, the wet towels on the floor, or someone snapping when they’re asked to do something. Things are tense. Let them slide.

8. Spend some time apart

Try and get an hour of alone time a day. Maybe it’s in little chunks, 20 minutes here, 10 minutes there, but try and get 60 minutes. And spend that time doing something you like – not chores!

9. Do something that makes you happy every day

Have something to look forward to. Maybe it’s a bath, maybe it’s a hot chocolate, maybe it’s scrolling through your phone for the ten minutes when your mum is talking to the kids. Whatever it is, make sure everyone does something that makes them happy no matter how small, every day.

10. Let the telly take the strain. 

No, you’re not a bad parent! Yes, everyone does it! These are unprecedented times. Don’t be afraid of using the TV to help when it’s really needed and you just need a rest.

Have you got any top tips for entertaining your children at home? Let us know below or on our Facebook page.

We love this idea by Gale Tremble-Wilson of a ‘Home Safari’. She and her daughter chose some of her stuffed animal toys to hide around the house, which they then took it in turns to find. They wrote them down on a list and ticked them off as they went. She said:

“She loved it so much we did it again the next day. It was made even more fun by dressing up for the Safari!”

The Port of Tyne has awarded funding to Children North East to develop Little Friends – a thriving parent and child group set up in the West End of Newcastle.

The group runs every Tuesday morning at our Families and Parenting centre in Cowgate. It was established by local mums who wanted a space where parents could bring their pre-school children to play together and already it’s a bustling group of 25-30 parents, babies and toddlers who meet every week to chat over a cuppa and swap parenting tips while their little ones play.

Cookery skills

The mums also make lunch together at the new community cafe that recently opened in the centre, learning valuable cookery skills.

Alice Shaw, a founder member and mum to Aryana, 18-months, runs the Little Friends Facebook group with her cousin Stacey. She said: “If the mums weren’t here they would just be stuck in the house.”

Messy play

“A lot of people want to do messy play but they don’t want to do it in their own houses so that’s what we tend to do. When they come here the kids can let their hair down and the mothers can have a proper talk with other mothers. It can be from weaning a baby to getting a baby to sleep. Sometimes I need advice myself but I’m happy to give it as well.”

Lindsey Wilson is Children North East’s project co-ordinator for Little Friends. Alice added: “I can go to Lindsey with anything. She’s always there to give advice to people. She has helped me with finding a new home for example.”

‘Little Friends helped me through my grief’

For Jane Riley (pictured below), the group has helped her through difficult times. Jane, mum to one-year-old Amelia, recently lost both of her parents. She said:

“Dad passed away in August and I lost my mam two years ago, since when I’d been my dad’s full time carer.”

“Little Friends has been great, otherwise I’d have been stuck in the house on my own. It’s got me through some tough times over the past few months.”

“It’s stopped me sitting at home and thinking about things, the grief would have been a lot worse if I didn’t have somewhere to go and people to talk to.”

The Family and Parenting centre has just begun receiving food deliveries from the charity FareShare, which redistributes surplus food from supermarkets, and Little Friends have begun cookery sessions with the help of Children North East staff.

Home from home

In a part of Newcastle that has child poverty levels of up to 48%* surplus food provision is a huge benefit to the local community alongside helping parents make healthy and affordable food choices.

“Last week we made lasagne and it was really good and this week we’ve made pizzas,” said Jemma, mum to 18-month-old Jacob. “Some of the younger mums don’t really know how to make these things so cookery is one of the other things we decided to go with.”

Little Friends are also organising school holiday day trips to keep the little ones entertained.

Natalie Johnson, who has Kayden three and one year old Keira Lily, sums up what Little Friends means to her. “Somewhere to go, somewhere to eat, somewhere for the adults as well as the kids. It’s a home from home.”

Louise Tinkler, HR and Communications Director at Port of Tyne, said:

“We are delighted to support Children North East; the Little Friends project makes a real impact in an area of our community that needs it most. We hope that through our support we can help families and young people to thrive.”

Tracey Welsh, Service Manager for Children North East’s Families and Parenting Service, added:

“We’re so grateful to the Port of Tyne for supporting our community to set up Little Friends at our Cowgate family centre, supported by staff at Children North East.

“We are all about giving babies and children the best start in life and this group really ticks that box – it provides the little ones with educational play and it’s a safe space parents can meet to swap parenting tips, offer support to one another, learn cookery skills and build that important bond between parent and child.”

· Figures from the End Child Poverty Coalition

A new community cafe is about to open its doors at our Families & Parenting hub in Newcastle.

Children North East has joined forces with the charity Sporting Chance, one of our neighbours at the Cowgate Community Centre and with FareShare North East to launch the food outlet with the aim of providing affordable healthy food to local families.

Children North East is hosting the café in its Families and Parenting centre whilst Sporting Chance are supplying staff, including trained chef Lee Wilson, who’s also a member of Sporting Chance’s teaching team.

Chef, Lee Wilson mixing up some pancakes

The café will take deliveries from FareShare North East who provide surplus supermarket food to communities. Tracey Welsh, Service Manager at Children North East’s Families and Parenting Service, said she hoped the café would prove popular with people from the local community. Tracey said:

“We know some people struggle to put healthy food on the table because, as we all know, fresh fruit and vegetables can be expensive. We hope that this partnership with Sporting Chance and Fareshare will make a decent meal more affordable for local families.”

Jamie Cairns, Director of Sporting Chance North East, said that once it’s established the café could also offer training opportunities to people who would like to gain catering qualifications. Seventeen-year-old Aimee Tams is Lee’s first apprentice and is looking forward to learning how to cook up a storm. Jamie added:

“We want the café to be a one-stop shop where people will be able to get a low cost, healthy meal, where we can interest them in the activities we provide and signpost them to different services. We would also like to be able to offer work experience and training as the café becomes more established.”

Competition to name the café

Children North East’s Families and Parenting Service runs a number of activities for families including baby music sessions; First Aid and home safety advice and equipment installation. There are also courses to help parents forge better relationships with their teens and pre-teens and more intensive courses addressing domestic violence.

Sporting Chance is a not-for-profit organisation providing education and training opportunities to people who can’t access mainstream education.

Sporting Chance and Children North East will be running a competition for the community to name the café and will be offering a small prize for the winner. Anyone wishing to take part can call in at the café with their suggestions.

Watch our video: https://youtu.be/SgbzNb544mc

With just a day and a half to go before our Nearly New Sale and still a lot of sorting and pricing up to do, we called on the invaluable help of the generous joggers of GoodGym Newcastle.

Maddy Winnard has been volunteering with GoodGym since it began in Newcastle back in April 2018. On a windy Thursday afternoon, an out-of-breath Maddy rang the Children North East doorbell after running four kilometres from Jesmond to our Benwell HQ.

She was soon joined by Liz Bennett, from Gosforth and they quickly got to work organising all the children’s books donated for our sale into age groups and price brackets.

Maddy (above, left) said:

“It’s very fulfilling and it puts me in touch with doing things I have never done before”

GoodGym nationally was set up in 2009 by film maker and social entrepreneur Ivo Gormley (son of Angel of the North sculptor Sir Antony). Whether you’re an altruistic athlete or simply a fun runner looking to get fit and give something back, GoodGym welcomes all abilities.

Getting fit for good

It’s all about working out with a purpose. People meet up, run (or power walk) to where they’re needed – do their volunteering – then run back, all within 90 minutes. It could be a charity like ourselves that needs a bit of help – for example PhD student Maddy has previously helped out at SmartWorks which offers dressing and coaching for unemployed women and Fareshare North East which distributes surplus supermarket food. To date GoodGym Newcastle have done more than 8,700 good deeds! How amazing!

You can run on community missions during the day time like Maddy and Liz, join a weekly group run, or jog to an older person’s home to help them with tasks around the house.

“It’s amazing how much we can get done,” Maddy added.

The group runs start from Newcastle’s Indigo Hotel every Monday night from 6.15pm overseen by qualified trainer Anji Andrews. Anji is on hand to help runners stretch and celebrate what they’ve achieved at the end of a run. She said:

“Running is incredible for my mental health…I love to pass that on. I try to motivate people by keeping running a positive thing rather than a punishment they feel they should do.

Running isn’t always about running fast, it’s about making an impact with every step.”

Well, Liz and Maddy certainly made an impact here at Children North East, helping us get over the finish line for our Nearly New Sale. Thankyou GoodGym Newcastle – you’re all stars!

For more information about how you can get involved in GoodGym Newcastle click here or, if you’re in another part of the country, click here for your local group.

We’re delighted to be joining forces with national charity Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) thanks to £2m of National Lottery funding aimed at removing barriers to learning for disadvantaged children.

We’ve been chosen as Child Poverty Action Group’s official project partner as we have both helped schools explore and address the impact of poverty on education.

Since its inception in 2014, our Poverty Proofing the School Day initiative has worked with 59,600 pupils in 129 schools in the North East and 58,900 pupils in 117 schools in other parts of the country.

Now, thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund, a new programme, called UK Cost of the School Day, will be rolled out to schools in Coventry, Neath Port Talbot, the London boroughs of Greenwich, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, as well as expanding to Moray in Scotland.

The funding has enabled us to appoint a Poverty Proofing Practice Adviser who will be involved in the poverty proofing of the 128 schools involved.

Through a structured, pupil-led approach, staff will work with children and young people, families, teachers, school staff and local authorities to identify ‘cost barriers’ in each school – and to co-design ‘action plans’ to remove them.

Inclusion levels and changes in pupils’ experiences of school will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention throughout the first two years of the project, with the final year focussing on spreading changes that have a positive impact for pupils, beyond the initial 128 schools.

Michele Deans, Operations Director at Children North East said:

“We’re enormously proud of our Poverty Proofing the School Day initiative and we’re delighted to be partnering with Child Poverty Action Group on this important work.

We’re looking forward to using our combined expertise to support more schools across the UK and ensure that every pupil can fully participate in school, regardless of family income.”

Alison Garnham, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group said: “School days are supposed to be the best days of a child’s life, but instead for some children and their families, they can be a source of anxiety if there are extra and unexpected costs for parents.”

“Nine children in every class of 30 are growing up in poverty and although school is free, increasing costs are putting a great strain on families, causing some children to miss out on aspects of school life.”

“This is why we’re delighted with the funding from The National Lottery Community Fund. This project will help schools work out what they can do differently to help to bridge these gaps – by making small changes to school life, they can make a huge difference to a child.”

John Knights, Senior Head of the UK Portfolio at The National Lottery Community Fund, said:

“Thanks to National Lottery players this project will support school children to be able to fully and equally take part in all aspects of school life. Importantly the project is putting young people in the lead to create solutions that reduce the stigma that they can feel and enable them to thrive.”

Child Poverty Action Group has also been working in Scottish schools through its own Cost of the School Day programme. https://cpag.org.uk/scotland/CoSD 

Pupils and staff in schools which have been involved in the earlier Children North East and CPAG in Scotland projects reported a range of cost-barriers to learning, including:

• Subject costs (e.g. materials for Art, Home Economics, IT, and the cost of theatre trips for Drama)
• Not having IT at home for homework
• Lack of money for school trips
• Lack of money for travel-to-school fares (or travel home from after school activities which end after the free bus has left)
• Cost of buying past exam papers and other revision materials
• Cost of hiring and maintaining a musical instrument

A range of bespoke changes were recommended by these projects, to stop financial exclusion at school, including:

• Choosing more affordable school trips, subsidising trips and/ or allowing parents to pay for trips in instalments
• Providing sibling discounts for fun events and trips
• Removing curriculum costs for subjects like home economics and technology
• Providing a starter pack for entry level pupils of bag, pencil case and stationery and setting up homework clubs with resources such as IT
• Reviewing school uniform policies, recycling school uniform items, buying plain blazers and ironing on badges
• Improved promotion of school clothing grants and free school meals
• Sharing bus hire with nearby schools
• Setting up breakfast clubs and breakfast boxes for pupils
• Reducing or removing costs for after school clubs and activities