At Home Activities
These are activities you can have the kids do while you are cooking or doing work at home. You want to implement a daily rhythm and routine with your children. First write out your schedule and don’t feel the need to stick to it exactly but at least it gives you an idea of your daily routine. You want to have meals/snacks around the same time and have different activities interspersed in between. It is important to monitor the types of activities your children are doing not only for you to accomplish the things you need to do as a parent and or as a working parent but also to give your kids breaks. You want to have an ebb and flow to your day – these consist of in breath and out breath activities that you alternate throughout the day. If this is overwhelming, start by creating your daily rhythm and I will give you some examples. In the meantime here is a list of some activities to fill up your daily rhythm/routine:
Arts and Crafts: painting, drawing, beeswax, play-doh, jewelry making, finger knitting, loom making
Baking/ Cooking: washing and cutting vegetables, using the salad spinner, mixing ingredients, measuring ingredients
Science: there are lots of projects online that are age appropriate! Observing insects and plants counts as science :)
Music: musical instruments or find things in your home that make noise (i.e. pots and wooden spoons, rocks in a bottle (to make a shaker), etc.
Story-time/ Puppet Show/Dress Up: reading books, making up stories, pairing puppets with story (i.e. reading a book and then having kids act out the book with a puppet show or a play)
Creative Play: fort building, building cities, block play, pretend fishing
Purpose Work: set the table, help with laundry, wash dishes, table wiper
Outside Play Time: if it’s raining, put on rain gear (kids love jumping in puddles); water play (a big bowl with measuring cups) or you can set this up in the bathtub → see @kidswimla for more water play ideas
Obstacle course/ Relay Race: half the fun is the set up! If you are doing indoors, you can use pillows, chairs, etc.
Clean up: this too can be fun! Use songs and ask where items go with a sense of wonderment: “hmmm I see a yellow scarf on the floor, I wonder where that goes?”
Find the missing items/ Scavenger Hunt: All you need is a flashlight and a maybe a large stick. You can hide items and make a list for kids to follow (can use pictures if need be)
Dance Party: freeze dance, tag (also great workout for parents!)
Yoga/ Meditation : @amanda_ehrman is doing a livestream kids yoga class at 9am PST on her social channels.
Spanish: Listening to songs in Spanish (or another language)
Click Here for a link to a sample schedule