This last year has taught everyone the importance of having a dedicated workspace. With families spending more time at home, parents working, and kids schooling, having an area where you can work uninterrupted is essential.
Whether you’ve been working remotely for a while or the transition to work from home is a new experience, you should have an area to complete all your tasks. But that can be difficult for many families with young children.
So, how do you keep kids occupied while you get some work done? Check out these eight kid-friendly office ideas to keep them behaved while you work.
1. Give Them a Dedicated Space
Many kids like copying what they see parents and even older siblings do. It’s one of the ways they learn about the world and how to interact with it. Use this to your advantage and give them their own desk space.
They’ll feel excited to have something similar to the grown-ups while it’s still all theirs. This dedicated space can be a small desk or a table placed somewhere in the room.
Make it a habit to do homework, learning exercises, or project in their own dedicated space. Your kids can follow your behavior as your both work on your separate tasks together.
2. Hang a Roll of Butcher Paper
Kids love to be creative and experiment, which can lead to a lot of interesting art projects. Some days, though, you may not have the time to lead them in a full art demonstration.
That’s why you can hang a roll of butcher paper on the wall and allow them to draw out their heart’s desires while you work. You can have them try to solve math problems or illustrate a scene from a book they’re currently reading.
Worried about marks on your wall? Don’t give it a second thought: washable crayons make cleaning up any stray marks a breeze. If you want to forgo the paper and crayon incidents altogether, you can try using a chalkboard.
3. Use an Hourglass
Children are famously impatient. To them, five minutes can seem like an entire hour. And every parent knows that it’s hard enough to get them to sit down for that long.
Get your kids to sit for more than a minute by using an hourglass to time them. You can set about a project and tell them to do it until the hourglass runs out. They might even be hypnotized by the falling grains of sand.
You can even make this a little competition. Challenge them to read so many pages or draw so many pictures before time runs out. Just be sure you know how long the hourglass runs for.
4. Make Stations
Everyone knows how hard it is to feel like you’re living out of a few rooms in the house. Kids can often feel restless after being cooped up inside all day. Combat this by getting them moving.
Create different stations that kids can visit and explore. Try an art station, a reading station, and a science station to get started. You can tailor the themes to what your kids are interested in.
5. Find Ways to Stay Organized
When everyone is crammed into one space, it can start to feel like chaos. Organization is one of the most important features of a kid-friendly home design. A clean environment can help you focus on the work at hand.
Toys, art supplies, homework, and books are only a few items you may have seen strewn about the house. Allow your kids to have their own storage solution and be responsible for putting their items in storage.
This ensures your office stays as clean as it can so you can get the necessary work done.
6. Display Some Art
A kid-friendly house is a place where children feel comfortable and welcomed. This is especially true of office space since many kids are told to stay out of the room, especially when someone is working.
Make your kids feel welcomed in the space by hanging and displaying not only their photos but some pieces of art they made. This can be a subtle way of letting them know they’re welcomed in the room.
You can also display art that shows how important they are to you even when you’re working. Try hanging a family portrait or a cute canvas written in the sand that features your family’s names.
7. Be Smart With Seating
You want the seating in your office to be comfortable so that your children are more likely to stay and relax in the office. It may be a good idea to vary the kind of storage you have for your child.
Chairs with a back are great for kids who want to read, while stools are better for getting work done. Try multipurpose seating as well to add more storage to the workspace.
8. Have Office Rules
Arguably, the most important thing you can do if you’re sharing an office space with your kids is to have set rules about the office. Communicating this clearly from the beginning is the key to success.
Maybe you have a quiet hour where you can get uninterrupted work done while they read. Maybe there are times when you require being alone in the office, like during a meeting.
Discuss these rules with your children and make sure they understand what you’re requesting. This extra step in communication will help your child understand boundaries and respecting other people’s time.
Kid-Friendly Office Ideas You Have to Try
Keeping kids occupied and entertained is hard enough when you can give them all of your attention. Having to do that on top of having work can feel like an impossible task.
It can be hard to get kids to sit down long enough to cross something off your to-do list. With these kid-friendly office ideas, you may find some success in keeping them occupied and entertained, giving you the time to do your work.
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