In Ontario we’ve recently been notified that our children are off from school for 3 weeks due to COVID-19.
After I got over the shock of the announcement, I started to ask myself what exactly would I do to keep my son busy?
I started to see a few ideas pop up on Facebook and Pinterest, and I decided to put them all together into this post as a resource for anyone looking for ideas to keep their kids occupied at home.
Let me preface this post with the fact that I wild definitely have days that will not look the way I’m planning them too. I’m hoping some of these ideas come to fruition, but I know there will be days when Netflix will help me survive the day!
My son thrives on a schedule. Everyday he asks what time everything we have planned is, and he loves structure. I thought it would be fun to create a different schedule every day for him – even if it’s just a scheduled time for lunch or reading.
Each day will change – I’ll do an afternoon movie one day, and a science experiment on a few of the other days – things will change, and things will go off schedule, but to have something to hand him each morning (I was thinking about putting it under his door each day like a hotel bill!) will make us both feel like there is some structure in our lives during this break.
The resources I’m using for many of my activities for these next few weeks come from online sources, and I’m sharing them below for you!
First off yoga – Minecraft style! There are a few other versions like Frozen and Pokemon on this YouTube channel. The perfect way to get some exercise in as a fun break!
I love this one – the Nasa for Students has educational materials for Grades K-4, 5-8 and 9-12!
You can find things like colouring sheets, all kinds of different games (like driving the Mars Rover looking for Martian rocks!), videos – there’s so much to do all on this website.
Scholastic Learn at Home has 20 days worth of activities that you can do from home. It’s free, and offers up to three hours worth of learning experiences for each day.
Day 1 is Animal Studies on Spiders – kids can watch or read two books about spiders, answer questions like Fact or Fiction or do a Word Match activity, watch a video about spiders, and finally complete a drawing activity.
Thought.Co is full of safe and easy chemistry experiments you can do at home with kids.
Google Arts & Culture has teamed up with over 500 museums and galleries around the world to showcase virtual tours and online exhibits. It’s really cool to see some of the exhibits and museums from home.
TED-Ed has all kinds of educational videos with subjects like Why Don’t We Throw Our Trash into Volcanos and How to Grow a Glacier! Some of the topics were for kids a bit older than mine, but some of them were perfect!
I went through Pinterest and made this board here – it’s filled with all kinds of at-home educational activities for kids! There are lots of things I am going to use here over the next few weeks, and you can click on the photo below to see over 70 pins of at-home activities for kids.
I went searching through our home to find some of our old activity books that maybe had a page or two not completed, and I cut them out to create worksheets. Mazes, word searches, math questions – anything I could staple into a booklet.
I also went looking through some of the craft materials I had and we had everything we needed to make a slime science experiment. Look around your house – I’m sure you have some unused paint, craft materials and activities to use!
I also took stock of some of our STEM games and educational toys today. Some of our favourites are GraviTrax and Elenco Snap Circuits Jr., and we love the Osmo system!
These are just a few of the ideas I’ve come up with, but if you have any other resources you can think of please let me know in the comments! I’d love to take a look at some other ideas to keep us busy at home!
Items in this post may have been provided to me for review, but all opinions are fabulously my own.