I’d hope every child whose school has closed, has been sent home with work to do. But keeping them enthusiastic and managing to take them through their work when you’re not used to it may be difficult.
Decided to try and put a few hints and tips in one place for parents/carers who may need them.

So the simple ideas first:
Make a schedule– I’d not expect it to be strictly adhered to, but if you have a day planned out, with different activities and lessons throughout it can help. Whether you sit down at the start of each day, or plan for the whole week and adapt as you go either way is good.
Get your children involved in deciding what to do, give them that bit of choice to help them feel empowered. From what they fancy learning, to the snacks they want to eat those choices will be good for them.
Try to mix up the type of activity so they don’t get bored.

Look for the opportunities for your child to learn something, every scenario has learning possibilities; especially for younger children. Whether it’s something they are learning at school that you can reinforce, a life skill, social skills or anything else.

Learning from home can be great and doesn’t have to all be about school work.
Take the time to think of things you can show your child how to do too!

Could they help with cooking? Getting them involved can be great fun and it’s a life skill they’ll definitely benefit from.
Perhaps give them a cookery book or get them to look through a site like BBC good food and get them to pick a recipe.
They’ll need to check if you have the ingredients to make it (especially with shops the way they are). Most kids will spend more time looking for stuff than actually cooking so some can be unsupervised.
While doing this you can discuss nutrition and hygiene easily.
Have them look at the nutrients labels now on food packaging and even encourage them to research what each label means.

Perhaps have them look at the ingredients and encourage some Geography by looking to find out where they are from, how they are grown, how they are transported. You can involve maths by calculating distances from the origin to where you are, and even talk about environmental impact of each ingredient.
This might be a good thing for them to make a poster/leaflet or a lesson to teach you or their siblings.

Speaking of life skills, can you include some small chores on the schedule? Some tasks that they can do or learn to do, it will help you and keep them busy.

Do you have hobbies or do any crafts that they might be interesting in trying such as sewing, knitting, woodwork, DIY, Painting, music?

If your child shows interest in something and is asking questions, help them to follow through with those.
If you don’t know the answer? well then you can find out together, there’s no shame in not knowing everything!
If they’re old enough to work independently on things like this, they could even teach you about it through a poster, a lesson, a story etc (Go along with their lesson and if it’s not completely right make sure you don’t crush them for it though!)

There’s quite a few educational programs out there that aren’t the boring videos we might remember from school.
Horrible histories, Storybots, Blue Planet, Planet Earth to name a few.
Let them watch for 30mins/1hour and tell them to make notes on the show as they watch it.

Then they can either make a poster/build/build/model or draft something written/spoken based on what they have seen. Encourage them to dig out their own books or use the internet to do some self directed research too.

Make sure you give them a time deadline where they show you what they have done (maybe 1hr to draw, build, create after watching).

Use the toys they have: lego/building blocks/plasticine/interlinks can all be used for them to make models to show you of things they’re learning about.
Dolls/teddies/action figures: why not get them to make up a story for those toys and act it out for you about a certain topic.
Paper, crayons, pens, pencils and paint are obvious essentials, but don’t panic, I bet you’ve got some one sided letters you don’t need that they can work on the other side of.

Why not do a bit of papier mache? you remember, newspaper soaked in glue/flour paste and pasted layer on layer over something like a balloon, bottle or plastic bowl, left to dry and then decorated.
It’s something that will take a few days so can be a big project they work on over the time they’re at home.
They want to make a mask? have them put on a play wearing them after they’re finished.
They want to make a bowl or other item, that’s great too and can be something they’re studying or a gift for someone else.
If they make something like a volcano with a plastic bottle/jar at the core, you can experiment with Bicarbonate of soda and vinegar/food colouring or mentos and coke to make the volcano explode (do this one outside unless you want to spend the rest of the day removing sticky residue from your living room!)

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Let them spend an hour on an educational app- timetables rock stars, Khan academy kids or whichever you think they will be able to manage.

Do you have a family member or friend who would appreciate a letter or a postcard they’ve drawn themselves? Especially think about people who are probably having to self isolate without much use of the internet. You can then walk to the post box to post it.

Give them a bunch of bed sheets/blankets/paintsheets, encourage them to make a den then spend some time reading in it. If they’ve not done this before they might need guidance and they might mess your house up a bit if you don’t supervise this one at least in the construction. But it’s great fun and reading/playing with sensory toys in the den may become a popular activity during this period.

Ask them to design their own superhero/pet/house/holiday and make a poster or draw a labelled diagram of it. Get them to present it to you explaining all the exciting innovations they come up with. This might lead to “how and why” questions that they can go off and look up too and see if it would be possible/how it would work.

Exercise wise: I know not being able to go out and play with their friends may cause difficulties. But there are things like the Joe Wicks workouts which will be streamed live on his Youtube Channel from Monday 22nd March and ask your children to come up with their own P.E. lesson for you or to teach you their favourite sport/game and have you join in.

See if you can encourage your children to write an entry into a journal over the coming weeks, they’ll be able to remember all the interesting/fun things you did together for years to come and can show it to their teacher when they go back to school. Not only that, but in the years to come people may be very interested in how this situation was seen from a child’s point of view!

A little thing I drew up as an idea for younger children, mostly aimed at those in pre-school but you could adapt it to include things for any age or ability really.
If you’re in isolation and can only go as far as your garden, a simple “treasure hunt”. Looking for signs of spring, or other items you know will be there, a couple of simple activities (drawing and making a collage).
If you don’t have a garden, you could change the items to find, to things you can see out of your windows or inside your house.

If you’re in the UK and decide to take the National trust and other places up on their offer to go for a walk around outside, look on their web sites as they sometimes have activity sheets that you might find helpful too.

While you’re out can they take photographs of their favourite plants and animals, when you get home they can find out what they are (if they didn’t know) and draw a poster or write a leaflet about them. Where they grow/live, their names, anything interesting that they can do or we as humans use them for etc.

Find out about the place your visiting, did anything important happen there in the past? Has it changed a lot or stayed the same?

Write a poem or a story using the things they see on the walk as inspiration when you get home.

Make a playdoh/plasticine/lego etc model of something they saw while they were out.

Encourage them to make a Bingo card of things they think they will see while you’re out and check off those they do see as you go. I’ve included an example with and without pictures, some possible pictures and a blank Bingo card you can print off if you want to use them.

If you’re struggling, there are people out there willing to help. You can ask questions on here or if you’re on facebook you may have seen teachers/learning support assistants/ex-teachers all sorts of people offering to do just that.
Don’t be afraid to ask.

Last but no means least. Take care of yourselves, try not to let this get too overwhelming and take time for your and your childrens Mental Health during this crisis.
Whether that means practising mindfulness (always worth a try getting your kids involved in that too), taking time in the day to just sit and watch/read/listen to something that helps you relax or talking to a friend on the phone.
We can get through this if we all just practice that little bit of kindness to ourselves, our community, the world in general.