Parents looking to entertain their children while schools are closed have been offered a helping hand thanks to the FA SuperKicks app, which enables children and adults to discover a world of football from home, no matter what their ability.

Launched in partnership with McDonald’s, the free app is helping to increase fun and learning for five-to-eight-year-olds, offering hundreds of skills, drills and games for young football lovers of all levels. With challenges, quizzes and creative tasks, it focuses on rewarding play and learning to encourage participation. There’s currently a new activity on Twitter every 2:00pm.

The challenges have been created by FA coaches and established upon the ‘England DNA’ Foundation Phase. The app is packed with football-related tasks like ‘scoring zone’, designing a team kit and writing a football story. Activities are across three levels of attainment and can also be played by one or two players for collective learning.

To encourage continual development in a fun environment, children’s participation will be recorded and rewarded with animated badges, plus achievements unlock customisable features and earn ‘Super Points’ for attempting selected challenges.

Each activity has an interactive video guide, with the star of the app called ‘Kicker’- a football shaped character acting as the child’s coach and mentor, providing encouragement throughout the challenges. The FA recently visited three SuperKicks fans, Olivia, Nawal and Mimi, who shared their stories on how the app has helped to supercharge their football fun this year.

Olivia already enjoyed playing football on her own and with friends. Now she is loving taking her skills to another level, joining her local team and using the FA SuperKicks app to work on new training exercises in her garden.

For Nawal, the fun entry to football means he has finally gained the confidence to play with his friends, rather than just watching them. Using the FA SuperKicks app, he has built up his confidence by initially taking on the beginner challenges and moving up when he’s ready.

For Mimi, it’s a different story. She’s been inspired to get outside and play, and also to get creative indoors thanks to some of the fun games and challenges such as kit design and drawing Wembley Stadium!

To find out more, or to download the FA SuperKicks app, visit www.thefa.com/SuperKicks. To get involved in grassroots Essex football, browse the menus above, follow @EssexCountyFA on Twitter and search for ‘EssexFootball’ on Facebook.