By Sarah White, The Hive Creative
As coronavirus continues to spread across the globe, many families are finding themselves homebound for the foreseeable future. Parents are now juggling working from home with homeschooling, and it can be difficult to keep everyone from going stir crazy! We turned to the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Emerald Coast for ideas to keep us all sane in these chaotic times. With more than 1,200 students enrolled in Clubs across Escambia, Okaloosa and Walton Counties, The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Emerald Coast knows how to develop educational activities that keep kids engaged!
1. Take a virtual field trip! More than 2,500 museums around the world have made their collections accessible online through Google Arts and Culture; you can also use Google to access virtual tours of national parks in the U.S.
2. Choose a theme for your day or week. Themes can vary from simple to more complex depending on the age of the children. Ideas include the color green, the letter S, Diversity Day, Olympics Week or Hawaii Day. Center meals, movies, games, books and activities around the theme.
3. Watch a family movie and have kids draw a picture of their favorite scene, answer trivia questions or develop a “sequel” story of their own in a journal.
4. Make paper airplanes and have a flying contest. Which plane flies the farthest or the highest and why? Watch YouTube videos for creative design tips.
5. Get out envelopes, stamps, pens, and paper and write a letter. Write to someone you love, like grandma and grandpa, or friends you can’t see right now.
6. Make exercise fun and create a family Tik Tok Dance!
7. Teach kids to make simple meals independently, fold laundry, wash windows and clean floors. We all need to do our part to keep the house/office/classroom clean!
8. Watch and learn about animals with the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. Each day they are taking viewers on a Facebook Live Home Safari highlighting one of their animals that includes an activity you can do from home. Many other zoos and aquariums also have live web cams on their websites, including the Georgia Aquarium, San Diego Zoo and Atlanta Zoo.
9. Pick a topic that interests the whole family and research it for a week. Fun topics could be famous athletes, local wildlife, historical figures or dinosaurs.
10. Join staff from the Brooklyn Public Library in New York for virtual story time featuring books and songs. The program is available via Facebook Live weekdays at 10 a.m.
11. Make trash art. Gather broken toys, empty food containers, wine corks, egg crates, etc., and let kids paint and glue pieces together to make their own creation.
12. Bring back Home Economics class! Teach kids to make simple meals independently, fold laundry, wash windows, or mow the lawn. We all need to do our part to keep the house/office/classroom clean!
13. Have Alexa entertain the kids! There are endless skills specifically for kids – everything from trivia to math to talking with Elmo!
14. Make an indoor fort with blankets, chairs and pillows or create a backyard obstacle course with patio furniture, the garden hose, outdoor toys, etc.
15. Make a time capsule. These are unprecedented times we are living in and should be documented. Collect pictures of your quarantine adventures, art projects you have done, letters you have received and newspaper article clippings. Everyone will enjoy looking back one day in the future.
