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<div class="blog_meta"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-4196 size-full" src="https://aleasdeals.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Giant-List-Of-Ideas-For-Being-Home-With-Kids.jpg" alt="" width="816" height="438" /></div>
<p><i>( for: actual quarantine, school closures, weekend social distancing, anytime!)</i></p>
<p>Thanks to the <a href="http://princess-awesome.com/">Princess Awesome &; Boy Wonder</a> Community for the amazing suggestions!!</p>
<ul>
<li>Have each kid pick a topic they&#8217;d like to learn about and spend 30 mins each day on that topic</li>
<li>Spend one day reading every single picture book we have in the house</li>
<li>Go through all the old mail laying around (ok, that one&#8217;s not for kids although they do enjoy helping tear stuff up)</li>
<li>Bake something every day</li>
<li>Have each kid write a letter and/or emails to a different friend or family member each day</li>
<li>Use all of our building toys on one giant structure</li>
<li>Wash our hands!!!!</li>
<li>Races of various kinds in the backyard (hopping on one foot, crabwalk, walking backwards, etc.)</li>
<li>Try stop motion animation with playdough</li>
<li>Facetime grandparents a lot</li>
<li>watch everything on Disney+</li>
<li>inventory the plants &; wildlife (from bugs on up) in your yard.</li>
<li>learn the parts of plants/flowers &; how they function (bonus if they learn the Latin names).</li>
<li>if you aren&#8217;t too squeamish &; have a spare clear shoebox size tote or 5-10 gallon tank, catch some pillbugs (rolly pollies, sowbugs) &; observe them (if you really do this, i can tell you how to set them up. i have about a thousand of them currently because it&#8217;s too cold here to thin the herd &; they&#8217;ve been reproducing all winter. they&#8217;re pretty interesting).</li>
<li>write a short story &; illustrate it.</li>
<li>learn how to do simple book binding.</li>
<li>make paper (from your old mail!)</li>
<li>have the kids help with yardwork in between playing games outside. They&#8217;re little, but they like getting dirty and &#8220;working&#8221; in the gardens.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.gonoodle.com/">GoNoodle!</a> Great for guided movement, relaxation, etc.</li>
<li>Board games, card games</li>
<li>Legos.</li>
<li>We have some extreme dot to dot books (1400 dots) that the kids love, especially the 5 year old!</li>
<li>Lots of reading, playing with the dog,</li>
<li>Working on learning to sew using stuff we have on hand.</li>
<li>Card making/scrapbooking projects (mostly for me but kids can do it too).</li>
<li>Getting the garden ready, we need to weed and work the ground. I might get seeds and we&#8217;ll set up to have our own starts this year.</li>
<li>Make tents and reading caves : ) flashlights, tidy snacks, books, and pillows!</li>
<li>Have a shadow show in the reading tent (we used blankets over chairs or a table)</li>
<li>Get binoculars and learn about the birds near your house, look them up on google and search for their birdcalls on YouTube</li>
<li>Learn how to make a stuffed animal</li>
<li>Play with cornstarch and water and cheap action figures</li>
<li>many educational websites are waving fees if your students school is closed</li>
<li>Collect a bunch of tape markers and cardboard boxes. That&#8217;ll keep them busy for a day or two.</li>
<li>Watch all the hand washing videos &; vote on your favorite. Discuss why each good, helpful, funny. The Holderness parody one is hilarious, the Vietnam Tiktok one is great choreography, some have good songs etc.</li>
<li>Also pick your favorite song with a 20 second refrain or verse perfect for hand washing length of time.</li>
<li>Family puzzles. Ones that are 500-1000 pieces and a challenging but not frustrating picture</li>
<li>We homeschool (4 kids) and honestly, just have fun!!!!!</li>
<li>Team up and really clean and organize each kid&#8217;s space, making a donation box for each. Parents are included.</li>
<li>Have a board game day</li>
<li>kids can also make their own games! Board games, card games, you name it! My daughter spent a lot of time this winter creating soccer and football games played with cards for moves and pieces made out of legos</li>
<li>Write a story cooperatively. One person picks a character and the other picks a setting and then go gangbusters together.</li>
<li>the folding picture story one! We called it “eat poop you cat” one person draws a small picture across the top of a paper the next person writes a sentence that describes that picture and folds Over the paper top of the paper hot dog style to cover the picture. So the 3rd person only sees a sentence and they have to draw a picture. They fold over the sentence.</li>
<li>Any and all art is fun at home: beading, painting, drawing, play dough or kinetic sand, sewing, etc. when my daughter was young we could do art all day.</li>
<li>Massive board game tournament with all the (mostly forgotten) board games we own!</li>
<li>Stolen from “growing up global fb page”</li>
<li>If your school is going on #quarantine and running #schoolonline, get <a href="https://amzn.to/2Wu98Sg">#GlobalKids for the special price of just $10.98.</a> Take a screen-free, curiosity + creativity boosting, global empathy + engagement trip around the world, from comfort of your home</li>
<li>My daughter (6) has enjoyed doing yoga at home. There are kid-friendly YouTube videos and printed cards with poses.</li>
<li>Zumba or Dance-along videos on YouTube</li>
<li>We home school exclusively and the best advice I have is check out Pinterest. There are tons of ideas for activities, games, etc.</li>
<li>Draw self portraits on blank faces</li>
<li>color coded different interesting places on a map.</li>
<li>I&#8217;ve had them draw maps of places and then make directions from one place to another to see if someone else could follow it.</li>
<li>We&#8217;ve done scavenger hunts, indoor treasure hunts where they follow clues through the house to a &#8220;treasure&#8221; at the end (could be candy, a movie, whatever), and a lot of charades.</li>
<li>I made videos with my 3rd grade daughter teaching kids how to write code. <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fplaylist%3Flist%3DPLYplbCVzPUQGJrGrCZ-ClH0S00EJphAi8%26fbclid%3DIwAR3vkg_--eb8zf8biXE2XNRm6_Hip90oT7IpWuLE9E7MD6U1UnqUEzYCZ8w&;h=AT2Ip-QIclbKhmPoR9N7gvUE6CSD9R5GbI3RAQm_W4BiDBkMFv4oRbi8ARZgYDxZLELoJERMd3aXRCXh59B50c_CCOT3SdmQCjde-iccBQGLsPvm0Lwr2jvPr0D4RiRSwOyFM4RLdOLkvNuXXhE">Check out the videos here</a></li>
<li>My daughter wanted a doll house for her 18&#8243; dolls. We saved cardboard boxes and got more from Dollar general and got to work. The closets and couch are cardboard as well.</li>
<li>There are a few easy &#8220;kitchen chemistry&#8221; type science experiments that are easy to do, like making slime, baking soda and vinegar reaction, etc.</li>
<li>we put food coloring under the baking soda in a mini muffin pan and used Pipette to drop vinegar in and then you can see the color!</li>
<li>Last summer we did an experiment to learn what each ingredient did for a cake (so we made one following the recipe, one without eggs, one without milk, etc.). We then compared and contrasted the different cakes &#8230; Then we ate a lot of weird cake.</li>
<li>There are a bunch of ideas on <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcuriositygirlsscience.wordpress.com%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR13QflddT2U4kLHTdd87pSQlqEN7O_QL14JbSgXtUITaNtTnFaDcrnb6lI&;h=AT3L04X9pBPxCHCriYhLq44y8et8ZdiCwHEy1O2clO-GzuNxM8PAq_8aVAmZejLcmuwZq48QU3KEjsYyMq2ekQC7X-_hDxdXKHvW34t0IDOYwzOUNZmr_87piiQ0sa-t6Gkp_R9gnYO-Xp8S8-Y">the lab section of our webpage</a>! And we have letters from women in STEM around the world!</li>
<li>give the dogs a bath and brush</li>
<li>wash and clean out my car (mostly their food trash and dirty socks)</li>
<li>mow the lawn (my 11 year old just learned!)</li>
<li>play sidewalk chalk outside</li>
<li>glow stick party</li>
<li>popcorn + movie marathon</li>
<li>Listen to kid podcasts &#8211; we love story pirates and smash boom best.</li>
<li>Declutter toys!</li>
<li>Have an Olympics with a bunch of events competitions &#8211; funny ones, helpful ones like cleaning and really fun ones like minute to win in style.</li>
<li>Learn new card games</li>
<li>We’re going to learn to make sushi!</li>
<li><a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesquirmywormy.com%2Fhome%2F2018%2F9%2F21%2Fhow-to-create-a-family-painting-without-tears%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR3FWahivh166yzwf4ghFpHFvBaHXgpx6cNVECqItO2i5gK75_VbsVFpyt0&;h=AT1K5nDRqs-vHwz0lJgVQymoBh9IaoN-Jz70hBb0cUt3WJSsh6sQos_B5vp6Oc4M2GtSQX6GBR88wIrgNCQ7gMT6ogLo2fog9FciVxEqTSCfCEFDtcpjE8nVD5L-jgXOKWd_udim6o8a7un40nc">Lots of art projects! </a></li>
<li>Dig up all the activity books, presents, etc that never got played with, and use those!</li>
<li>There’s always time tested building a tent in the house with blankets and chairs. Great for just before nap time.</li>
<li>We are going to bust out our hiking gear and try new hiking paths. As long as you stay away from over populated areas you will naturally stay a safe distance from others and sick people generally don&#8217;t hike!</li>
<li>Do a study on planets, then have the kids create their own planets- how big is it, where in the universe is it located, atmosphere conditions, can it sustain life, how long is a day/year, name it, etc.
<ul>
<li>you could even spread the planets out around the house to show &#8220;approx.&#8221; distance from each other.</li>
<li><a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fjoshworth.com%2Fdev%2Fpixelspace%2Fpixelspace_solarsystem.html%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0B71WBkrcEaofHW3TdID4fJDiKWNP13wCSwyV891LnOOpZ17M6ockj9BY&;h=AT2jlIPZncEzBrE2gAx09kIlGty6mnAkEea2LZutuoCjqpLDoNN7VgaV19GP5BWPidBwPVZszulP-lFz6_NsVoSj94TFlGRfh6vmN3QtP-EJxIyFUznFduk3pJKTPTXHd5F7O5A7MAdYTaPRnNI">Watch this</a> to learn about relative distance</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Design a new space craft, draw plans, then create out of legos or household items. Spend some time pretending you&#8217;re on different planets with different gravity, you could seriously spend a whole week on just fun space activities.
<ul>
<li>But that&#8217;s not limited to space- these ideas would work for animals, geography, body systems, historical events/time periods, etc. Beyond that, do some fun physics experiments like making a bridge out of straws, egg drop protectors, paper airplanes, etc.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/puppetmaster/id438080891">PuppetMaster</a>: an app where you can animate anything from a drawing to a stuffed animal.</li>
<li>Practice spinning poi &#8211; my daughter is just learning how to spin and it’s been fun practicing together.</li>
<li>Puzzle races: put several puzzles (20+ piece puzzles) in a paper bag and shake it up. Pour pieces out and give each person the puzzle box they are to put together. Go! (Cooperation tends to be a result as pieces are traded.)</li>
<li>Dig through cabinets and figure out recipes for that thing you got at the grocery store and thought &#8220;this is interesting surely it can be used for something!&#8221; And then make it!</li>
<li>Audible!</li>
<li>Water play</li>
<li>Make ice cream</li>
<li>Make and play with Play dough</li>
<li>gardening</li>
<li>I let them “paint the fence” with washable paints outside</li>
<li>My mother used to let us put on swimsuits and get out our beach towels and have a pretend beach party on rainy or snowy days, complete with Beach Boys music.</li>
</ul>

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