Dad shares his clever parenting hack for keeping his kids busy during quarantine

Parents have been looking for new and inventive ways to entertain their children while quarantining during the coronavirus pandemic. One U.K. dad, meanwhile, is being credited with a clever game for his kids.

Duncan Gillespie, 38, put his sons’ toys in the freezer overnight. In the morning, it was his sons’ job to try to unfreeze them, using their creative minds to try to think of ways to get the toys out of the ice quickly.

Jem, 5, and Bram, 3, spent an hour freeing their favorite toys from the ice.

“I was quite chuffed with myself because I set them up in the garden, came back inside, made myself a bacon sandwich and sat down,” Gillespie admitted to SWNS.

Gillespie said he was able to do some work while watching the boys freeing their toys, which included a triceratops, shark bath toy, tiny T-rex, dolphin and a small plastic lizard.

If you want to try this at home, fill a Tupperware box with water, put toys in it and then freeze them overnight.

“They loved it. It was quite fun to watch them come up with strategies,” the inventive dad shared.

“As I was out there I could see them saying ‘what happens if we push it down the slide,’ ‘what happens if we drop it.’ They were trying all sorts of things.

“They’re both very creative boys so it was just kind of fuel for their creativity. I think that’s why they played with it for so long,” he added.

When it began to rain and the boys went inside, they quickly realized that their dad’s boots offered up a great way to hack the toys from the ice.

“I had given them spoons because I just thought, ‘What’s the hardest thing to give them to string it out for as long as possible?’ I reckon it took them about 90 minutes to complete the full rescue,” he added. “They were happy, that’s the main thing. They were really engaged so it was a win-win for everybody.”

Gillespie has been working from home since the coronavirus lockdown while his wife, Bex, continues running a zero-waste food business in Sheffield, England, where the family lives.

He originally saw the frozen toy idea on a Facebook group where other parents suggest ideas to help each other in lockdown.

When he posted his new-found trick on Twitter, he received more than 6,000 likes.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

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• Doctor brings joy with viral dance videos: 'I can show you that we're in this together'

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