A dad turned his entire house into a giant ball pit for his kids who haven't been able to visit their favorite playground

• Joel Conder, who runs the YouTube channel Dad V Girls, has been isolating with his wife and four daughters since March.
• To bring his kids some fun at home, Conder rented 250,000 plastic balls and transformed their house into a giant ball pit.
• Conder surprised his daughters and his wife with the at-home fun, showing their gleeful reactions in a video.
• "I know it sounds cliché, but when else are we going to have this period of time where we're so focused on family and being together?" Conder told Insider.

Joel Conder is no stranger to finding creative ways to entertain his children.

Conder, a dad of four based in the UK, has been running the YouTube channel Dad V Girls for two years. He uses the channel to showcase the antics he gets up to with his daughters.

Conder told Insider that a combination of "a love for making films and videos and passion for family life" led him to create the channel, which has nearly one million subscribers at the time of writing.

Conder and his family have been isolating together since before the UK even started its lockdown

Conder, his wife Sara, and their four daughters — Chloe, 2, Sophie, 8, Grace, 12, and Kaci, 14 — have been staying in their home since March.

Conder has asthma and Sophie is immunocompromised, so they decided it was in their best interest to stay home as much as possible.

But keeping the kids entertained at home can be challenging.

Conder often took his kids to an indoor playground before the pandemic, particularly because the weather is unpredictable in the UK in the early spring. One of the girls' favorite aspects of the space was a ball pit.

But they decided to stop taking them once they got worried about the pandemic, even though the kids would miss it.

"That's where the idea came from," Conder told Insider, as he wanted to bring the fun of the indoor playground to them.

Conder decided to surprise his daughters and wife by transforming their house into a giant ball pit

There's a company called Ball Mania in the UK that specializes in bringing the fun of ball pits to people's homes and event spaces.

Conder hired them, renting 250,000 plastic balls from the company, ensuring there were enough so even an adult could dive into them.

"I was really committed to it," Conder said. "If we're going to go to this much trouble to do it, we might as well just go all out."

To ensure the balls would be a surprise, Conder arranged for his daughters to go to his wife's cousins' home for the day when his wife had a prior engagement.

Then, he had Ball Mania come to drop off the balls, all of which were either new or hadn't been used in two weeks, as Conder didn't want to unintentionally bring the coronavirus into his home. Two of Conder's close friends also helped him arrange the balls so the surprise would be ready for his family.

"It was unreal seeing my kitchen literally full with these balls," Conder said. "It was just the strangest thing but so exciting."

"The kids knew nothing," he added of the surprise. "My wife knew nothing."

When the girls got home, they were completely blown away by the at-home ball pit

All of the girls were thrilled by the balls, as you can see in Conder's video. But no one was more excited than Sophie.

"Sophie was shrieking with excitement," Conder said of his 8-year-old. "She just couldn't contain it."

Conder knew the girls would be excited, but he was a bit worried Sarah might be upset by the balls.

"She's very house proud, and she likes things tidy and there's that side to her," he said. "But then there's another side to her where she's super fun and always gets involved."

"The initial reaction was like, 'What have you done to my house?'" Conder said.

But after her initial surprise, Sarah embraced the fun, diving in with the rest of her family.

They kept the balls for a full day, with the Ball Mania crew on standby to help clear out the house.

The experience reminded Conder of how much fun it is to spend time with his family

"I know it sounds cliché, but when else are we going to have this period of time where we're so focused on family and being together?" Conder said. "Why not just make the absolute most of it?"

But Conder also wants people to know you don't have to transform your house into an indoor playground to make your kids happy while they're spending time at home.

"One of the things that we get so much enjoyment out of right now is a simple board game," Conder said of his family. "We have not played board games as a family for years. And now we're having games nights, we're having quizzes, we're all sitting around the table as a family."

"We don't know how long it's going to last, but I hope we could look back and say, 'Yes, a lot of bad things happened, but look at how great of a time we had,'" Conder added.

You can follow Conder on YouTube here.

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