Creative Ideas for Kids at home

My wife and I send our kids to a preschool where one daughter attends the class the meets in the morning and our other daughter attends the class that meets in the afternoon. This means prepping the kids for a trip, loading them in the car, driving to school, unloading all of them, walking in, dropping off, loading back up, traveling back home and unloading them, FOUR TIMES A DAY! That may not seem like much, but it is a hassle.

When the government came out with their response plan to COVID-19, our preschool shut down for two weeks, and rightly so. When we heard, my wife said, "I don't know which will be tougher, driving them back and forth to school or having them all at home all day for 14 days?" While it may be easy to look at what's going on with social distancing as a benefit for staying at home and getting rest, it can easily lead to restlessness. For families with young children, staying stuck at home can lead to hysteria, insomnia, and is a surefire way to see John the Baptist's words, "[Jesus] must increase, I must decrease" become the reality in your spiritual life (side affects are not clinically proven or researched, so don't quote me). Therefore, I wanted to help get some activity ideas for parents whose kids can't leave the nest, and I found a great resource compiled by Dan Nichols from Princess Awesome and Boy Wonder. Here's the list:

CREATIVE IDEAS FOR KIDS AT HOME
(Princess Awesome & Boy Wonder)

• Have each kid pick a topic they'd like to learn about and spend 30 mins each day on that topic
• Spend one day reading every single picture book we have in the house
• Go through all the old mail laying around (ok, that one's not for kids although they do enjoy helping tear stuff up)
• Bake something every day
• Have each kid write a letter and/or emails to a different friend or family member each day
• Use all of our building toys on one giant structure
• Wash our hands!!!!
• Races of various kinds in the backyard (hopping on one foot, crabwalk, walking backwards, etc.)
• Try stop motion animation with playdough
• Facetime grandparents a lot
• watch everything on Disney+
• inventory the plants & wildlife (from bugs on up) in your yard.
• learn the parts of plants/flowers & how they function (bonus if they learn the Latin names).
• if you aren'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's too cold here to thin the herd & they've been reproducing all winter. they're pretty interesting).
• write a short story & illustrate it.
• learn how to do simple book binding.
• make paper (from your old mail!)
• have the kids help with yardwork in between playing games outside. They're little, but they like getting dirty and "working" in the gardens.
• GoNoodle! Great for guided movement, relaxation, etc.
• Board games, card games
• Legos.
• We have some extreme dot to dot books (1400 dots) that the kids love, especially the 5 year old!
• Lots of reading, playing with the dog,
• Working on learning to sew using stuff we have on hand.
• Card making/scrapbooking projects (mostly for me but kids can do it too).
• Getting the garden ready, we need to weed and work the ground. I might get seeds and we'll set up to have our own starts this year.
• Make tents and reading caves : ) flashlights, tidy snacks, books, and pillows!
• Have a shadow show in the reading tent (we used blankets over chairs or a table)
• Get binoculars and learn about the birds near your house, look them up on google and search for their birdcalls on YouTube
• Learn how to make a stuffed animal
• Play with cornstarch and water and cheap action figures
• many educational websites are waving fees if your students school is closed
• Here’s a list of all of them that are waving fees
• Collect a bunch of tape markers and cardboard boxes. That'll keep them busy for a day or two.
• 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.
• Also pick your favorite song with a 20 second refrain or verse perfect for hand washing length of time.
• Family puzzles. Ones that are 500-1000 pieces and a challenging but not frustrating picture
• We homeschool (4 kids) and honestly, just have fun!!!!!
• Team up and really clean and organize each kid's space, making a donation box for each. Parents are included.
• Have a board game day
• 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
• Write a story cooperatively. One person picks a character and the other picks a setting and then go gangbusters together.
• 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.
• Massive board game tournament with all the (mostly forgotten) board games we own!
• Stolen from “growing up global fb page”
• We've done scavenger hunts, indoor treasure hunts where they follow clues through the house to a "treasure" at the end (could be candy, a movie, whatever), and a lot of charades.
• I made videos with my 3rd grade daughter teaching kids how to write code. Check out the videos here
• My daughter wanted a doll house for her 18" dolls. We saved cardboard boxes and got more from Dollar general and got to work. The closets and couch are cardboard as well.
• There are a few easy "kitchen chemistry" type science experiments that are easy to do, like making slime, baking soda and vinegar reaction, etc.
• 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!
• 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 ... Then we ate a lot of weird cake.
• There are a bunch of ideas on the lab section of our webpage! And we have letters from women in STEM around the world!
• give the dogs a bath and brush
• wash and clean out my car (mostly their food trash and dirty socks)
• mow the lawn (my 11 year old just learned!)
• play sidewalk chalk outside
• glow stick party
• popcorn + movie marathon
• Listen to kid podcasts - we love story pirates and smash boom best.
• Declutter toys!
• Have an Olympics with a bunch of events competitions - funny ones, helpful ones like cleaning and really fun ones like minute to win in style.
• Learn new card games
• We’re going to learn to make sushi!
• Lots of art projects!
• Dig up all the activity books, presents, etc that never got played with, and use those!
• There’s always time tested building a tent in the house with blankets and chairs. Great for just before nap time.
• 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't hike!
• 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.
• you could even spread the planets out around the house to show "approx." distance from each other.
• Design a new space craft, draw plans, then create out of legos or household items. Spend some time pretending you're on different planets with different gravity, you could seriously spend a whole week on just fun space activities.
• PuppetMaster: an app where you can animate anything from a drawing to a stuffed animal.
• Practice spinning poi - my daughter is just learning how to spin and it’s been fun practicing together.
• 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.)
• Dig through cabinets and figure out recipes for that thing you got at the grocery store and thought "this is interesting surely it can be used for something!" And then make it!
• Audible!