A Guilt-Free Way To Keep Your Children Entertained
If you're a mum of young kids, I already know the last few months have been super challenging for you. Don't get me wrong, I love that I've been able to spend more time with my kids, but they can be a handful sometimes. Tom is four, and Rebecca is seven, so as you can imagine they don't always get on.
At the start of the stay-at-home order, I was super stressed out having to keep my kids occupied while also getting my work done. I'll admit I took the easy root and tried just sitting them in front of the TV in the hope they would stay quiet for longer than 15 minutes.
But almost every afternoon there would be an argument over what to watch. Tom loves Spongebob, but all Rebecca wanted to watch was Peppa Pig. I tried to have them take it in turns, but of course, that never worked out.
I was chatting to a fellow busy mum, Chloe, when she let me in on her secret to occupying her kids that are of similar ages to mine: BBC's Muzzy. Muzzy is an award-winning language learning program created by the BBC that uses cartoons and online games to teach kids new languages. It's entertaining as well as being educational, teaching kids foreign languages via the natural immersion method.
Muzzy offers Spanish from Spain and Latin America, French, English, Chinese Mandarin Chinese, German, Italian, and Korean languages. It sounded like a good solution, and the thought of some guilt-free screen time for the kids did make me feel relieved. Plus, I figured it was the perfect time to introduce the kids to a new language - through fun stories and characters with Muzzy, they could learn up to 1,200 words.
So I decided to take the plunge and subscribe to Muzzy. We went with Spanish as our language of choice, and I was excited to see how much the kids would learn. The day after signing up, I stuck a Muzzy cartoon on the television and was surprised that both kids were happily watching it! They watched the whole thing from start to finish without making a peep.
Tom loves the Muzzy cartoons, and Rebecca loves the online games Muzzy has, she plays them all evening. After a week of watching Muzzy, I was surprised that the kids had picked up an impressive amount of Spanish words, and were even able to teach me some!
Turns out, there's a short window of opportunity for learning a second language - after age 10, it becomes more difficult. And with this extra free time, they could really get ahead and have a great new skill when we come out of this.
It's been a month of using Muzzy and the kids are speaking Spanish to each other, here and there, getting kicks out of the fact I don't understand what they're saying! I'm happy they're getting along again, and that they're staying entertained while being educated too. Muzzy was the best decision, it's helped my kids and I become a lot more productive, while still having fun in these trying times.
