Like so many of use during these times of Coronavirus, we are stuck at home for an extended period of time. Luckily, we are in Florida and have the warm weather, a large backyard with pool, grass and ping pong table. So we are spending a lot of time outdoors and won’t have any trouble social distancing.
One week has already past, but the kids will be home at least another 3 weeks.
So I have compiled a list that I will refer to as soon as I see boredom coming up.
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Here are my top 10 things to do while stuck at home with the kids!
1. Time to get Crafting
Personally, I think there is no better thing to do with your free time than craft! But I could be biased.
Nonetheless, kids really like to craft and it really helps develop fine motor skills to play with scissors, cutting paper, drawing and just manipulating all kinds of objects and let your creativity run wild.
Now is the time to do all that.
Most people have cardboard boxes, paper, scissors and paint or pencils in their home. Just give them to your child and let then make some houses, cars or other creative things with them. It is not really about what they create or if it actually amounts to anything. It is much more about the process of thinking about what to do or what to draw and just going for it. It is important to feel free to create anything. No matter what.
If you are looking for specific craft projects, I created with free DIY tutorial for a Rainbow Wall Art.
It is an easy project and can be created with any type of yarn you might have laying around. And it is a great way of bring some rainbow and sunshine to your child”s room.
If you are fresh out of craft supplies for the kids, I strongly recommend this Mega Arts and Crafts Jar. When we got this box full of paper, pompoms, bits and pieces including scissors, the kids were crafting for days! And since it is all easy to use, they didn’t even need any help from me!
2. Karaoke Dance Party
One of my most favorite make! These easy Karaoke Mashine come together quickly and you can make them in your favorite color! The perfect summer accessory!
You can also just sue your laptop or Tablet and put on YouTube. Search any song you would like to sing with the term Karaoke attached. Most songs are available as Karaoke songs by now. Then just sing along. You might not have a microphone, but it’s just as much fun!
3. Movie Poster Drawing Competition
This has been so much fun for the kids and it took up a lot of time. Which is really such a plus!
Everyone has to think of a favorite movie, but keep it secret from all the others. Then each one of you gets a piece of paper. This is a great activity for the entire family to do and sit around the table. Have some crayons, markers or colorful pencils in the center and then get drawing.
So create a poster for the movie you selected, but don’t use the title in it! Because part of the fun will be for everyone else to guess what movie the poster is for. Just draw an important scene of the movie, main characters and maybe some catch phases. Just have tun!
4. Movie Night
Once you are done with your movie posters, you can decide which of those movies to watch for movie night! Amazon has a great selection of movies and we always use them for our movie nights.
Make some popcorn so it feels even more like going to the movies. We got this Popcorn Maker and have been enjoying seeing the popcorn poping and then adding different seasonings to it.
5. The Games are on
One of the most popular things to do to spend some quality time with your kids is to just play all kinds of board games or card games.
Make in an official game day and play several games in a row. Each one could pick their favorite game to play. We love to play Sorry, Shoots and Ladder, and even Clue.
And card games are also really popular in our house. I love this collection of all the most popular card games.
6. Reading books together
Choose a book together that the entire family would like to read. Maybe you have one at home you haven’t read in a long time or were too busy to even start. Or you can get a new book on your Kindle.
Of course, this should be a book that is appropriate for your youngest child but still fun for everyone else.
Now cuddle up on the sofa or even the bedroom for a change of scenery and take turn reading aloud from the book. It is so much fun to experience a book together!
7. Create an Escape Room
My kids love going to Escape rooms! Of course, we only have been doing it for special occasions. So to get their fix, they started making up their own escape rooms on their bedrooms!
One person is the creator and the others will later have to escape the room. So the creator goes in to the room and creates little pieces of paper with clues on how to get out of the room. Each clue leads to another clue that are all hidden around the room. Then the others get to go in the room and have to find the clues to escape. The creator will wait in front of the closed door to give extra clues and help when needed.
I also found this Escape Room Game with 3 different escape rooms already set for you. I think this would be a great gift for my kids!
8. Make up a Story one word at a time
We have been doing this a lot lately. Especially during dinnertime. You just go around from person to person making up your own story. You can do that by each person saying just 1 or 2 words at a time or each person is saying one sentence at a time. Some really fun stories can come out of it! You might think it is going one way with your sentence, but the next person can completely change it around.
For the next story, change up your seating or go the opposite direction.
9. Built an Exercise Parkour
We have this game Hyper Dash that is lot’s of fun and get’s you running around getting all your exercise without the kids even realizing that they are working out! The way it works is that you lay out the 5 pieces around the house. Maybe not too far away in the beginning and then making it harder and harder with each try. Then one player at a time uses the console to trap each piece in the order that the console shouts out. The player who can get them all in the least amount of time wins the round! A really fun game to get everyone moving!
If you can’t get the game, you can set up a similar parkour. Just mark 5 pieces of paper with numbers 1-5 and put them all around the house. Then one person acts as the console and shouts out numbers that the person doing the parkour has to get. You can stop the time for each player with your phone.
You can up the difficulty level by adding addition and subtraction. So instead of shouting out 5, you can say 7-2. Math practice and exercise in one! How cool!
10. Bake Together
Because the family that eats together, stays together. Baking is perfect right now because we all need something sweet to relax and there is nothing more relaxing than the sweet smell of something baking in the oven. Plus, you can teach your children some valuable life lessons on how to bake and use the oven and kitchen tools.
We had gotten my 8 year old daughter this baking book for Christmas. And finally we now had the time to try it out. First thing we made is an apple pie. It came out really nice and we all enjoyed it a lot!
Pro Tip!
Most of all, have fun together! This is a time you can choose to enjoy all the extra time you get to spend with your family. How often do we complain about having to run around all the time and never really seeing everyone in your close family. Now that you have this time, cherish it. Come up with your own games, tell each other stories about things that you missed to tell but were important for you. Get to know each other more and grow your love.
Which one will you try first?. Comment below if you have any questions and let me know what you are doing with your family here and on Instagram #kaileacrafts