Things to Do with Kids at Home

The Saskatchewan Health Authority recommends social distancing and limiting gatherings as the information around COVID-19 is rapidly evolving. All the closures, cancellations and isolations are so important to the health of our community. Therefore, our Saskmom.com Saskatoon family event calendar will be on hold until this recommendation is lifted. 

A silver lining during this challenging time is the opportunity for quality {and quantity} time with our families. There really is no shortage of things to do at home!

• Have a living room dance party with your favourite tunes. Invite friends to choose a few songs to share and join in over FaceTime or Facebook Messenger! 
• Count your blessings. Challenge your family to collect 100 gifts of gratitude. If everyone in my family of four wrote down one thing we were grateful for every day, in 30 days we would have collected 120 gifts. 
• Have kids take turns planning family "spirit day" themes and plan costumes, activities and food themes for the day.  
• Check out Saskatchewan in Motion's idea jar.
• Go for a walk outside {while maintaining appropriate social distances, of course}. Maybe make it a scavenger hunt? 
• Play board games.
• Make a craft. It's the perfect time to go through all the cute Pinterest boards we've made!
• Projectkid.com and @hotcoffee_creativekids on Instagram are fun places to look for art projects.  
• Challenge the kids to build a LEGO city or to take a 30-day LEGO challenge.
• Organize Pajama Olympics.
• Play in the back yard.
• Make a chore jar together, placing various tasks on slips of paper, to add some fun to clean-up time. 
• Alphabet Bingo -- There are six cards in this set, so if you have extra, you could forward the PDF to friends and play together over a video chat. 
• Borrow ebooks and audiobooks from the Saskatoon Public Library digital resources.
• Take virtual Canadian farm tours at FarmFood360.
• Challenge another family to a family lip sync battle -- prerecorded or over FaceTime.
• Stream music, movies, performances and concerts from Saskatoon Public Library's digital resources.
• Set the kids up to explore a variety of free, ad-free, self-led educational lessons at KahnAcademy.org. 
• Take a virtual tour of Mars.
• Check out this great list of virtual field trips. 
• Find a lonely hill for sledding. 
• Learn some new dance moves using "Just Dance" or other dance videos on YouTube.
• Yoga in the living room.
• All hands on deck for meal prep and clean up. 
• Use photos and/or clippings from magazines to create vision boards or to decorate an old shoebox for a special memory box.  
• Make a care package for a neighbour and put it on their front steps.   
• Make your own granola bars.
• Search up some family fitness routines on YouTube.
• Explore the Northeast Swale or another wooded trails for a winter walk.
• Challenge your kids to reread all the books in the house and weed out the ones they no longer want (for future donations) and organize the ones they do. 
• Take turns reading a family chapter book together. 
• Have your kids pick a weekly topic to research on the Internet. Have them research one question about their topic each day and write one paragraph answering each question. By the end of the week they can arrange their paragraphs into a one-page essay that they could read to their grandparents over FaceTime.  
• Journal time with prompts or not. 
• Watch a sunrise or sunset together. 
• Start a knitting, sewing or woodworking project together that you already have supplies for around the house or garage.
• Make your own puff paint.
• Write a letter and snail mail it!
• Movies and popcorn.
• Make a dream destination list together and have kids research future vacation spots. 
• Start a paper or online scrapbooking project together.
• Family puzzle day.
• Find fun grade-specific educational games at ABCya.com.
• Make homemade play dough.
• Just play!  

What fun and interesting things are you and your family doing?