Wild Eyes Covid-19 coronavirus lockdown activities for kids: Slime Time

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Because of Covid-19, cabin fever is in the curriculum for primary and intermediate school kids and their parents. Keeping Kiwi kids active, curious (and awake!) during lockdown is a serious daily challenge.

This week the Herald, in partnership with Wild Eyes, presents a series of fun, inspirational missions to get NZ kids in lockdown off screens and outside to engage in nature.

Christian and Nova think about slime in nature while making a home-friendly version you can stretch and squish as much as you want! Watch the latest Wild Eyes mission to discover the difference between home-made slime and nature's slime. Both are goo-glorious!!

Check out our Slime Time episode above to find out more. And for other wild ideas or to share photos of your kids' amazing efforts go to wildeyes.co.nz

The Wild Eyes video series was made possible as part of an emergency $700,000 funding round launched by NZ On Air, which has given the green light to nine new projects created in lockdown, at a time the local production sector has come to a grinding halt.

Chief executive Cameron Harland said the response to NZ On Air's call for applications on April 1 was extraordinary.

"We received 112 applications seeking $5.6m in funding. We had set aside $400,000. The quality of the proposals, the range of ideas and creatives involved, and the support of the commercial platforms for the initiative has been remarkable."

In response to the flood of excellent project ideas, NZ On Air was able to reallocate some funding previously allocated but no longer required and increase the pot to a fraction over $700,000.

If you're a parent or teacher wanting to know more about the Wild Eyes project, here's some information from the website.

About the site

Wild Eyes is a new website that aims to get Kiwi kids off screens and connected with NZ nature, science and the environment ... using screens!

Wild Eyes provides awesome digital incentives to Kiwi kids for completing fun nature missions. The missions are designed to be completed at home or at school, and are perfect for weekend, backyard, or holiday activities; for inquiry learning, LOTC and post-site visit environmental engagement.

On the Wild Eyes site users set up a profile, pick a Wild Eyes mission, complete the mission and upload a photo of the completed activity to the site. Completed missions earn users digital rewards e.g. new sets of wild eyes for their profile avatar, and tawaki penguin emoji likes from other users.

The idea that is kids inspire other kids. All photo uploads are moderated before publication on the site and users can choose to publish their photo uploads publicly, or keep them private.

The Herald will release a new episode of Wild Eyes each day around lunchtime.

Watch all the episodes here

Episode 1: Backyard Bivvy
Episode 2: Bird Cafe
Episode 3: Animal Detective
Episode 4: Slime Time
Episode 5: Fire Pit
Episode 6: Caveman
Episode 7: Matariki Munchies
Episode 8: Crystals

(Episodes will be updated with more lockdown-produced content - watch this space!)