10 suggestions: How to stay cool with kids during hot summers, while staying at home

Usually when I get back from work and start unlocking my front door, I can hear their little feet running to welcome me. Today I can’t hear them. I enter my flat, and I can only hear silence. It’s weird, as the only time one can hear silence at our place is when we are either all asleep or not at home. This is very suspicious, and I know something is going on…

My little shark and fish are running out of the bathroom, being fully ready for swimming: googles, swimming caps, they only needed fins. My kids want to go for a swim. I start thinking, should I get them into the car and drive to a nearby swimming pool, or beach, as not all of us have a pool in our backyard, terrace, roof, or should I improvise in my own bathroom? After my long and intense day at work, I make my decision fairly quickly. I have no excuse but to join them. I put on my swimming shorts and googles. We fill the bathtub

and start our water adventure.

Sometimes it’s enough that you stay at home with your family and create a world where you can all play together and just for moment become kids again. You only need some good will and imagination!

Here is how we stay cool and have fun at home:

• We improvise fountains and waterfalls with the help of little buckets and sprinklers. I use them to tell stories about pirates, their adventures and sea battles. I sometimes ask myself, how on earth do I get such crazy stories, but what’s important is that parents get to play together with their children and participate in their adventures, even when you are only playing in a bathtub.

• Bathtub disco. Kids’ attention is usually drawn to bright colours and shiny toys. It’s always fun when you throw a sparkling bracelet into the water, and glow sticks. Catching glowing objects from the bottom of the bath tub is always fun, especially if you switch off the lights and play some music.

• One of their favourite games is “singing in the rain” because it’s also a great pre-exercise for the kids to deal with water getting in their face. We switch on the shower and sing our favourite songs under it, and they laugh so much when their dad starts gargling during his singing routine.

• Bubbles are always in fashion. After we make foam in the bathtub, we take straws from the kitchen and start making bubbles. This is also one of the exercises to teach your children how to breath in the water.

• Fishing is always a challenge. If you don’t already have your “fishing gear”, it’s enough that you tie a rubber toy to an end of a rope and improvise fishing in the bathtub.

• Ball is always a good friend. Even when you are in the bathtub you can throw ball. Although, to avoid the ball hitting a mirror, knock off mommy’s make up, using a balloon is a good replacement.

• Since you already have balloons, water balloon fight is so much fun. You just need to fill them with water instead of air and you are good to go!

• Sponge action. When you have two or more children, it’s enough that you leave them to play on their own, while carefully monitoring what they do. That’s how my little shark and fish have created their own game where they wash each other’s back, hair, teeth. In order to make this game even more fun I gave them two colourful sponges.

• Diving. Yes, you can do it in your bathtub. Who can hold the breath longer? Of course, I always win! However, it is important that you keep them properly motivated to be better than you.

• Last but not least, we have the inevitable rubber duckies in different colours. We cannot have a single bath without them, as they get to float around our arms, legs, heads…

You see, it’s easy to have water fun with your kids even at home. It’s enough that you are with them. The only difficulty is that we need to mop all the water and get the bathroom back to its original shape and keep the mum happy!

I believe your fingers and toes must have got all wrinkled by now, it’s time that you get out of your tub.