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How to keep kids busy at home in quarantine
(special covid-19)

Elvine Assouline - Founder

How to keep the kids busy at home
Special edition Covid 19

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, useful and necessary public health measures are inevitable (closing of schools, cancellation of march camps and sporting and cultural events…). We know it’s not easy for you and your children. It’s more likely to be incredibly stressful and logistically challenging.

But we also know that there are simple ways to turn unexpected time at home into exciting opportunities and Fun time for your kids.

Our job at The Fun Master is to create incredible events and keep the Fun going no matter what. That is why we’ve created this free resource to provide your children with 20 days* of exciting indoor activities and stories, videos, and fun learning challenges for helping you to go through this unanticipated staycation. 

We hope that you and your children stay safe and healthy, and wish you the best of luck during this stressful time.

With best wishes from all of us at The Fun Master.

*We will update this blog post every days until all 20 days of content is available.

I suggest that you add up to this list every day with your comments and suggestions.
How to contribute? Comment on this article or send me an email at [email protected].
Let’s create the ultimate list of smart content found on the Internet to keep the kids occupied at home.

THIS ARTICLE WILL BE UPDATED EVERYDAY!

 

Create a schedule for the kids

Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to stick to it

We don’t have the pretension to advise you on how you should organize yourself, or tell you when and what your children should do. As parents you know probably better than anyone else what is the best for your family. Nevertheless, if we can help you and save you some time building a spacious and flexible schedule for your kids and give you some breaks in your day, we would have accomplished our mission!

You can download our free schedule below.

Easy activities to do at home

Don't say yes no game

Yes, no, is a simple verbal game for two or more players. It can be played at home but it’s also a great car game. 

The rules

The Yes Or No game rules are nice and simple. You start a conversation with the players and ask general questions that would normally require the answer “Yes” or “No”; however, the players aren’t allowed to say either of these words (All other forms of yes or no, included sure, okay, yep, nope… as well as the head movements).

You can build up on this rules and add make it more challenging by including more rules like:

  • Prohibited words: Yes, No and any word that contains Yes or No in them (e.g. S’no’w, ‘Yes’terday), Acronyms (e.g. lol).
  • The answer must be more than one word. (Usually, it must be a complete sentence.)

Hallway laser maze

Learn how to turn your hallway into a laser maze

A hallway laser maze is easy to set up and will keep kids busy as they jump, crawl, and climb they way back and forth. It’s a perfect activity when you are stuck at home with the kids. All you’ll need is some roll of crepe paper you can find at the dollar store or you can also order it online HERE 🙂

Check out the video from it’s always autumn.

Stain Glass Window

Stick at home!

This is a really cool idea that kids of all ages would love. Unfortunately, the post I found on Pinterest redirects to a broken link so the tutorial is no longer available.

But you can see from the picture that you hang up a sheet of plastic, and then cut up squares of roll of crepe paper (You can bundle with the previous activity). Then allow your children to glue or tape the pieces on. What a cool work of art to create!

Racing Pom Pom Balls

Keep the competition on for the whole week!

This is a game from frugalfun4boys that I feel like my own nephews would enjoy so much. I have 2 nephews who are very competitive.

So what better way to bring out that competitive nature, then to tape a track to the floor and allow them to blow pom pom balls around the track with a straw?

Visit virtual museums

Experience the best museums from London to Seoul in the comfort of your own home.

There is a way to get a little culture and education while you’re confined to your home. According to Fast Company, Google Arts & Culture teamed up with over 500 museums and galleries around the world to bring anyone and everyone virtual tours and online exhibits of some of the most famous museums around the world..
Now, you get “go to the museum” and never have to leave your couch.

Reading books

Choose their favourite books, snuggle up on the sofa or, even better, build a reading fort out of blankets and cushions. If your little ones have excess energy, use your imaginations and reenact some of the scenes from your favourite stories together.

Here some best seller 2020:

Play some kids podcasts

Chill out and relax – All you have to do is listen.

Let your kids chill out and relax while they are listening cool stories and podcasts.

Stories in French (up to 10 years): 29 books read brilliantly, 8 to 20 min.

We also recommend you to have a look at the Facebook event of Valérie Fontaine. She is a youth author and offer live stories.

Teach them about washing your hands!

Homemade scratch and sniff paint

Here a nice and fun activity from kidsactivities.com you can do with our toddlers.

This recipe makes a small amount of each colorful scent. Use a small container to mix them.

Ingredients:

  • 1 Tablespoon of White Glue
  • 1 teaspoon of Water
  • 3/4 teaspoon of Chocolate Powder OR Flavored Gelatin depending on what smells/colors you want

Trash Art

Find some recycled materials and let your kids paint them. Kids love painting random objects and making beautiful creations from them.

List of education companies offering free subscriptions due to school closings

With schools closing across the nation, parents and educators are in bit of a panic as they try to figure out how kids can learn and obtain their education from home. If this sounds like you, stop stressing. This is going to be super helpful!
We have an entire list of education companies offering free subscriptions due to school closings (none exhaustive list)

Huge thank you to Amazing Educational Resources for this list!

Do Yoga as a family

These are stressful times. Whether you have done yoga for years or have never unfurled a mat, it’s a good time to explore some of the ancient practice’s soothing benefits. And why not explore cat stretch, downward dog and crow (all common asanas, or postures) as a family? Everyone from toddlers to teens can get in on the act. There are tons of good, free yoga classes available online (start with YouTube). Or order a deck of Yoga Pretzel flash cards and learn a few poses each day.

Listen to astronauts at Story Time From Space!

The coolest combo!

Do you like stories? Do you like space and astronauts? What better combo than an astronaut reading a wonderful story for your kids? This is what Story From Space do!

Do a daily linch doodle with children's book author and illustrator Mo Willems.

For the artists!

Every day at 1 p.m. ET for the next few weeks, Mo will host a doodle session from his studio. Set a reminder via Facebook invite here, then stream it live at The Kennedy Center.

Stick match-Up

Susie Allison

Draw shapes, letters, numbers, words or math problems on sticky notes and hide them around the house for your child to find. Then have the child match them up on a “key” that hangs on the wall.

49 fun physical activities to do with kids aged 2 to 4

This list of 49 activities is the ultimate go-to for any playdate, home child care setting, or a morning or afternoon with a caregiver. Whatever the situation, short attention spans mean that it’s a good idea to have a few of these up your sleeve.

The article is also available in french here 🙂

For curious kids who love mysteries and puzzles

Mail Order Mystery is a company in Toronto who creates great boxes full of perplexing puzzles, curious clues and twisting plots. Each mystery takes place over six weeks. The letters are written directly to kids from the characters in the story. These characters have problems to solve, missions to complete and mysteries to unravel, and they can’t succeed without the help of your kids. That means that your kids are not just a part of a story, they are the heroes of a story. 

Cool interactive and educational websites

We all know that the internet is a big place. These cool websites you can visit are fun to look at and explore. 

neal.fun/deep-sea is a stunningly comprehensive interactive deep sea visualization that shows you the creatures whom reside at nearly every depth in the ocean, all the way down to the deepest point ever discovered.

There are other cool interactive activities from the same website neal.fun

 

Another really educational and interactive website is onezoom.org. This website is an amazing interactive map of the evolutionary relationships between the 2 million species of life on our planet! Great tool for helping students understand the nature of science.

Playing a real-life Angry Birds game

With Covid-19, staying in quarantine is tough for the parents but it’s even tougher for the kids as they have a lot of energy to spend! So how about organizing a cool and creative game in your backyard! Start stashing those boxes away and create a real-life Angry birds game. It’s an inexpensive game that is fun for the whole family, and the best news is that it doesn’t cost hardly anything at all!

60 activities in response to "I'm bored"​

I’m bored, I don’t know what to do….You know the drill and it’s never easy to be creative and find an activity that will keep them busy. That is why we’ve created this fun and free printable with 60 ideas to give back to kids when they say “I’m bored!”

Look on the bright side

Don’t forget: This is going to be a formative time for your child. What do you hope they’ll say when their grandkids ask them what they remember about the coronavirus outbreak of 2020? Make this time special. Do projects together such as filming a movie about your family or making cards for isolated elders in your area. Share stories about your childhood and teach them games you enjoyed as a kid.

For some families, the first days of being at home together may be the hardest to balance between work from home and keeping the kids busy. Despite everything, the first days may be quite fun, but once the whole experience is no longer novel, it will become harder. Put in the time to figure out what works, because the return is more ease for everyone and more time to do your own projects (Review your Fun schedule and note what worked the best to reprogram it the following week).

Most of all, be compassionate — toward yourself and your children. We have never experienced anything like the current crisis, and all of us are pioneers.

Other ressources

Titles
Types
Links
Register of French nationals living abroad
Government
toronto.consulfrance.org
Status of cases in Ontario
Government
ontario.ca
Scholastic
Educational
classroommagazines.scholastic.com
Brain POP
STEM
brainpop.com
150 Activities for Kids
Book
Amazon.ca
Kids’ Crafts
DYI
thesprucecrafts.com
Duolingo
Educational app
duolingo.com
Epic
Digital library for kids
getepic.com
Peekapak
Social emotional learning curriculum
peekapak.com