Here are 11 creative ways to entertain the kids when pregnant and refuse to bend down to pick things up/ can’t move too quickly/ want to just sit in the one spot for an extended period (aka Being A Billion Weeks Pregnant.)

Okay, so I’m partial to a bit of exaggeration and I’m sitting at 35 weeks pregnant.
But that’s just a few shy of a billion, right?
3 pregnancies in three-and-a-half years means that this old body is protesting with a crazy combo of aches and pains.
Coupled with this insane heatwave and we’ve been sticking close to home of late.
(A polite way of saying that the motivation and energy required to organise and shepherd a toddler and preschooler out of the house is fairly non-existent.)

Apparently these little people expect to be entertained on a daily basis. What’s with that?

KEEP THEM ENTERTAINED WITH ICE PLAY

So about that heatwave…. Our strategy of late has been to play outside as much as we can in the morning before beating a hasty retreat indoors as the day warms up.
Ice play has been regularly pulled out here of late.
These activities do require some preparation the night before but provide oodles of fun and engagement.

* Freeze some plastic toys in ice and let the kiddies chisel away to “free” their toys.

* Place blue tack at the base of a skewer. Stick skewer into the base of a takeaway container.
Fill container with water and freeze. Add a sail and you have some ice boats.

* Add some water coloured with food dye to a mould. Stick in some small pieces of straw. Freeze to create your own ice paints.

KEEP THEM ENTERTAINED WITH FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES

* Miss 3 has been obsessed with practising her scissor skills of late. So we gathered some flowers and herbs from the backyard and she cut them up. A sensory and fine motor experience that smells good!

* I’m always amazed by just how much kids love play dough. Check out our favourite play dough recipe. I added in some cake pop sticks and cut-up straws to create a threading experience.

* Pipecleaners and beads have been a hit here recently. This isn’t a set-and-forget activity for young ones- definitely adult supervision required- but I completely underestimated how engaging this activity would be. I’d recommend having the beads contained within a muffin tray to prevent beads rolling off onto the floor. AIn’t no pregnant woman want to be crawling around picking up stray beads! Since introducing this activity, we’ve become a bracelet-making factory here.

* I’ve been meaning to try coloured spaghetti with my littles for ages. When an attack of pantry moths meant that I had to clean out the pantry, I seized the chance. Simply add food dye to boiling water and cook your spaghetti in it. We used our coloured spaghetti to create crazy hairdos. We also used it in our water play table just for something different.

* We followed this recipe to make some air dry clay. The kiddies had fun making ornaments and pressing beads into the clay.

KEEP THEM ENTERTAINED WITH CREATING WITH LOOSE PARTS

* My kids love any craft activity involving glue. In this activity, we gathered different materials to create a Chinese New Year decoration.

KEEP THEM ENTERTAINED WITH PAINTING

* Painting activities are always popular here and I do have a very high mess threshold. If you don’t, you might want to check out my post on Time Savers for Art and Craft With Kids.
Here’s a tip- I generally always follow a painting activity with water play. So we might paint outside and then turn the hose on to rinse everybody clean. This morning, we painted at the dining table and then everybody was shepherded off to the bath for some water play in the bath.

You might want to read my tips on how to prevent kiddy painting from all turning khaki green.
One of our favourite painting activities was these Eric Carle-Inspired Tissue Paper Stars.

KEEP THEM ENTERTAINED WITH COOKING

I’ve been busy stockpiling the freezer with food for When The Baby Comes.
This egg-free Banana Bread is always on high rotation here, so we’ve been whipping batches of this beauty up regularly.

There you have it. 11 creative ways to keep the kids entertained when you’re pregnant.
Please share your tips and wisdom in the comments!