Home with Kids

HOME WITH KIDS:

A Collection of Suggestions

Take what you need / Do what works for you

Get a schedule. A simple rule that a lot of homeschooling families use is this: School work and chores first. Then play time / free time. A checked-off checklist sets kids free to do other things. For many, the switch is lunchtime; others just let kids finish as quickly as possible and do what they want. (Here is my family’s schedule at the moment.)
You may want to make a family dinner more of an event. Involve people in planning. Break out the candles.
Consider a weekly schedule, as well. Some families may have traditions that just carry over. (Friday night is pizza-and-family-movie. Sunday morning is a time for prayer.) Others may want to create some new ones. (Friday morning is Everybody-Pitch-In-and-Get-the-House-Really-Clean. Tuesday Night is Game Night.)
Think about ways for individual people to get alone time or one-on-one time. Everybody-hanging-out-more-or-less-together-constantly can be hard, especially for introverts!
Check out education companies offering free subscriptions during coronavirus closings.
Some suggested at-home activities (for smaller kids, may make sense for older):

• Read, read, read, read, read!

• Leaf rubbings

• Object (coin, key) rubbings

• Paint with Q-Tips or brushes or fingers or toy cars, etc.

• Salt and watercolor painting

• Homemade playdough

• Cutting practice

• Tearing practice

• Torn collages

• I Spy walk in the neighborhood

• Dig for worms

• Collect seeds

• Plant seeds/start a garden

• Start a compost collection

• Learn to cook or help cook

• Red Light/Green Light

• Hide-and-Go-Seek

• Rhyming games

• Card games of any kind: Memory, Go Fish, Old Maid, Clue, Monopoly, etc.

• Tea parties

• Play “restaurant”

• Make sock puppets or paper-bag puppets

• Puppet show

• Sing-a-longs

• Different movements: grapevine, tippy toes, walk backward, crabwalk, skip, hop, jump

• Make simple household cleaning fun—songs, music, child-sized supplies

• Charades

• Crossword puzzles

• Make up and put on a play

• Play salon and give each other manicures/pedicures/foot rubs

• Play salon and give your children haircuts

• Dance party

• Listening to books aloud while you draw or stretch or just close your eyes

• Painting an alley mural or garage mural with leftover paint

• Yarn bomb one of your trees

• Begin a birding or bug journal—what birds or bugs come near your house?

• Be a naturalist in a nearby park or in your yard.

• Play with cornstarch + water

• Make a sensory bin (if outside: try pinecones and pine needles and smooth stones); if inside, perhaps rice and beans and cups

• Play ball (soccer, basketball, toss, beanbags, kickball, any kind of throwing/catching/kicking/passing)

• Climb trees

• Indoor or outdoor forts

• Phone calls to relatives, especially older ones who might be lonely

• Stargazing or moon-charting in the evenings

• Origami

• Collage

• Painting

• Make a quarantine flag and fly it (kids used to have these)

• Keep a quarantine journal

• Check to see if you have any sick or elderly neighbors whom you could help in simple (safe distance) ways

• Knead bread/make bread

• Make a sourdough starter

• Make a map of your block or apartment building, etc.; make a map of just trees, or fences; make a smell or sound map

• Guess smells with a blindfold on

• Make a sculpture out of items to be recycled

• Draw on the windows with erasable markers

• Iron broken crayons between waxed paper

• Penpals/letter writing/postcards/thank-you notes

• Finger knitting, knitting

• Crocheting

• Yoga

• Stretching

• Sit-ups, plank, push-ups, jumping jacks, long jump

• Write a poem (try Haiku, say)

• Write a story

• Write a speech on a topic

• String noodles, or beads

• Make friendship bracelets

• Learn to French braid or do some other hairstyle

• Giant box fort, decorate it, etc.

• Make and decorate cookies

• Paint with shaving cream in the bath

• Play with Jell-O in the bath

• Fill the bath with blankets or stuffed animals and read there

• Fly a kite

• Throw a Frisbee

• Sidewalk chalk

• Spray bottles with food dye and water, outside

• Play doctor

• Play “trip” (put together chairs to make a ship or car, etc.)

• Play “trip” in the parked, turned-off car

• Alley track meet

• Bubbles, indoor or out

• Dress up

• Germinate seeds in window using wet paper towel, plastic bag, seed (can take them from fruit you’ve eaten)

• Match socks

• Blocks

• Paper airplanes

• Make butter with a marble, jar, and cream (shake!)

• Have a family trade-and-barter market—trade items between siblings, etc.

• Swimsuits and a sprinkler if warm

• Camp in the yard

• Walk to the nearest park

• Photography walk

• Learn to use a compass

• Learn to read a map

• Assign a report based on anything worthy the child is interested in; use as an opportunity to critically/imaginatively evaluate online sources as well, or do a report just using what’s available in your house

• Spiff up a pet (brush them, dress them, make a game for the pet)

• Make up stories and tell them to each other, make them up together

• Kitchen science experiments

• Read to a pet, a parent, silently

• FREE art tutorials live online daily (beginning 3/16)

• Virtual field trips

• Live feed from the Cincinnati Zoo every weekday at 3pm