Celebrate Children’s Week with our 7-day itinerary

Children’s Week is a nation-wide celebration for the growth and achievements of all Aussie kids in the past year. This year’s theme is based on UNCRC Article 31: “Children have the right to relax, play and take part in activities they enjoy”.

Inspired by this, here’s a 7-day itinerary of enjoyable activities your kids can partake in for a fun and memorable Children’s Week.

Day 1 is all about physical health and developing social skills. Scientific research has found that there are many benefits to playing team sports, especially for kids. Whether it’s football, basketball, or cricket, a team sport may help your kids:

• Improve their self confidence
• Learn how to play and work as a team
• Encourage exercise and physical activity
• Build communication skills

Get a head start and invite your child’s friends along to a team sport game at your local park after school. While you’re at it, you might as well set up an afternoon tea party and encourage some fun bonding time between your kids and their classmates.

These days, most kids surf the internet and play games online on a regular basis. To protect and keep them as safe online as possible, it’s important to teach them digital safety habits and grow their awareness on issues such as cyberbullying, scams, and screen time balance.

The Optus Digital Thumbprint is a program that supports digital safety and wellbeing with educational workshops, guides, and resources for young people and families. Digital Thumbprint offers facilitated workshops for kids of many ages, starting from those in Year 5. You can learn alongside your kids with a parents’ workshop and share your learnings afterwards with other parents hoping to prioritise their kids’ digital safety.

Continuing on the theme of digital activities, why not introduce your child to the world of eBooks on Day 3? If you’re not yet familiar with eBooks, they are digital copies of books that can be read using an eReader, making reading that much more accessible and fun. An eReader usually also comes with bonus features such as an automatic dictionary and highlighting functions, so your child can personalise their reading experience as much as they’d like.

You can access eBooks via a digital library or a subscription-based platform like Kindle Unlimited. Ensure your kids have an enjoyable Children’s Week and discover more tips on how to make reading fun for them here.

Who doesn’t love getting hands on with an arts and craft project? It’s time to get creative during Children's Week, where your kids have free reign over a DIY project that they’ve been itching to do. Whether it’s making a kite, folding origami, or painting, it’s time to support your kids’ creative endeavours with some crafts material and good old newspapers.

Take the opportunity to teach your kids something new with an educational TV show. From nature documentaries to an episodic cartoon, lessons can be learned from all sorts of TV shows and series. Here’s a few of our favourites:

• Puff: Wonders of the Reef (G) on Netflix
• Wild Kratts (G) on Netflix
• Wild Isles (G) on Amazon Prime
• Planet Earth II (G) on BINGE

You can check out all these amazing TV shows on Optus SubHub partnered platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, BINGE, and many more.

Time to switch off the TV, computer and eReader and take a break from the screen with an old-fashioned but fun jigsaw puzzle. Let your kids pick a puzzle they like (bearing in mind puzzle piece age recommendations) and encourage them to try their hand at some visual problem-solving.

If you’re having trouble keeping your kids focussed on their puzzle and away from their devices, you may want to use Optus Pause. Available to eligible Optus customers, Optus Pause is a tool that lets you manage network access on your family’s connected devices from My Optus app.

It’s the final day of Children’s Week and after completing all the above activities, your kids certainly deserve a day to decide an activity for themselves. Be sure to support anything your kids come up with (provided it's safe) and help them celebrate the end of Children’s Week with a fun and memorable day.

Easily manage your eligible subscriptions on Optus SubHub by bringing them together in one place with one simple payment each month. Save up to 10% on subscriptions including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, BINGE, BritBox, YouTube Premium and more when you link them to Optus SubHub. T&Cs apply.