Fun and Engaging Activities to do at Home with the Kiddos
If you’re practicing social distancing with your children (and most people in the country are), you may have started to get a bit of cabin fever. With kids bouncing off the walls, eating all the emergency food rations, and whining that they’re bored, you’re definitely going to need a few ideas to occupy their minds and little bodies so you can breathe for a moment. And let’s face it: it’s not just the kids who might be climbing the walls. Maybe you need to engage your mind a little, too! Keeping reading for fun and engaging activities to do at home with the kiddos.
Below are a few fun ideas, activities and sites that you can do with the whole family, whether you’re practicing social isolation or it’s just a snow day. Have fun!
All Things Disney
If you have kids, it’s hard to get away from the Mouse. Disney has had a monopoly on kids since, well…almost a hundred years now. Why not lean into it?
Disney has done a real solid to parents everywhere by releasing the much-anticipated Frozen II on Disney+ a few months early, so parents and children practicing self-isolation can watch and enjoy together. But if you don’t have the streaming app, or are quite frankly already sick to death of watching the same movie over and over, you can still get your Disney fix in other ways!
Why not try this Disney trivia, and see how you stack up against your kids? Or download one of the many Disney drawing tutorial apps to your tablet or device? If you’re like us, you probably have four or five Disney-themed puzzles languishing in the basement or attic. Why not drag one out and spend an hour putting it together? Say what you want about puzzles, but they’re actually really fun. Trust us.
Video tutorials/lessons/storytime
Over the past few days, many notable celebrities, authors, public figures and museums have begun offering Youtube and Facebook videos for bored ones sitting at home. Author/illustrator Mo Willems (trust us, your kid knows who he is) is doing a lunch hour every day where he doodles with/for children. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is offering free opera, and the Cincinnati Zoo is offering a free interactive tour of the animals! Not to mention the dozens of free concerts, comedy routines and more being offered by various arts’ affiliated folks on Twitter and Instagram. Go check some of them out! Better yet, make your own!
Reading
Many schools seem to be offering incentives for extra AR reading, but even if they aren’t, why not take this opportunity to do a little extra reading with your child? Dive into that Harry Potter series, pick up a Choose Your Own Adventure book, or let them read to you from their favorite series. Even if it’s just a comic book or graphic novel, now is a great time to sit down in a quiet room and explore the worlds within the written page with your child.
It’s an uncertain and sometimes scary time for children right now, but with just a few easy (and free) ideas like this, you can leave them with some happy memories of spending time with family, quietly enjoying the world from their very own living room.
