Okay I already know what you are thinking, “Enough is enough! I’ve been at home with these kids for weeks now with no end in sight!”
I completely hear you and agree! Its been tough and trying on everyone but I think again, and forgive me if i’m being redundant, that there are absolutely some bright sides to this quarantine. I hope your family has found many. You may even long for it after we get back to “normal” again.
I’m going to share mine with you here:
-I’m exploring things for my kids to do that, I think I never really got into as a child for one reason or another. I’m loving dominoes and currently have a ramp / ball set on order and I can’t wait for it to arrive! I may be more excited than the kids. I hope they like it too though 😂!
-I love having the time to spend with my family instead of packing up and scurrying around to leave the house. It has been relaxing to not rush as much and I think it creates a good energy we can all feel.
-I have been cooking a lot which is a good and a bad thing! It’s just not as tiring when you have time to do it. That being said, I have been cooking with the kids more so and they are learning a lot of basic skills like measuring / pouring / cleaning / sequences / following directions….okay so we are ALWAYS working on all of those skills on a daily basis, but I do think cooking helps!
-Family meal time is more of a daily standard. Although often still messy and disorderly, we do enjoy more meals together which is so good for families to bond, learn healthy eating habits and work together to make dinner and cleanup smooth. I’ve been making my kids be more involved with cleanup since I have more time and patience for that. They alternate unloading the dishwasher. It used to be a whine and fuss but now since it’s become a routine no one seems to mind it. Same goes for daily bed-making and room-cleaning. Still not perfect but we are getting better so that’s great!
I’m sure you can all list several reasons that you feel grateful at this time too! Doing this, even mentally, definitely helps to realize the good in being shut-in! SO I implore you to try it out!
Anyways, now for the fun stuff: What activities have we been doing over the course of the week?
- Virtual book readings: -Michele Obama reads to the kids Mondays on PBS Kids at 12:00 you can find this on you tube
11 am daily Mystic Aquarium goes Live on their facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/mysticaquarium/
You can watch the Roger Williams Zoo daily at 2pm for zoo school or anytime on youtube
We have found several Earth Day activities and Book readings as well on Facebook:
2. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 2 pm Taste Buds offers FREE kids cooking club. You have to sign up with your email address. Then they give you the ingredients list a few days beforehand but mostly these are pantry items. I was missing a few but I improvised and it still turned out good! For each child who signs up $1 goes to No Kid Hungry Foundation which is such a nice to do!
So far we have made their Applesauce muffins and their Cinnamon sugar donuts-both times I had no applesauce so I had to make some. My kids never eat it, so it usually sits around if I buy it. At least apple sauce is pretty easy to make and we have time to make it!
Here is also another cooking offer on Facebook that is free at this time specializing in kids cooking and birthday parties called Made by me Cooking School They are out of Warren, Rhode Island. I did watch Heather’s last video live on brownies and it was cute with her and 2 kids.
3. YouTube Kids Zumba has still been pretty awesome for us! Here are the ones my kids keep asking for:
<—- This one is by far our favorite!
<——This one brings the energy up!
<——-The kids just love this one ?
(you should hear Jamison try to sing Gangnam Style song😂)
4. Reset Recess on Instagram LIVE at 2pm Eastern time Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. So full confession here, I didn’t know how to do a Facebook or Instagram live at all now I’m catching on (another thing this quarantine did for me!) SO this is a live streaming of workouts meant for the entire family (especially the kids) to get up and move. You don’t use anything but your own body to sweat by jumping, running, kicking etc. My kids did this now twice. The first time was dicey but the second time they were a lot more interested. Gabby, the instructor has 2 kids of her own, Eva and Lennox, and they will be seen in the background working out with her. This in itself motivated my kids. A few other reasons why they participated was that I was doing it with them, Gabby shouts them out during the workout if you mention their names in the comments which draws their attention, and she uses fun things that kids like such as animal moves-frog jumps, bear crawls and has them counting as well ” Four more “! By the end of the 20 minutes we were laughing so hard, running into each other and sweating. We all loved it. We usually do dance and swim along with several other activities to burn off energy so activities that get us moving are craved by all of us, especially on rainy days. In order to partake in it, you have to have an Instagram account and like Reset Recess. If you don’t know how to do the rest contact me and I’ll teach you! https://www.instagram.com/p/B_LuG83DlEJ/
5. As I mentioned, We have had some interest in STEM activities. For all you that don’t know what this acronym means it stands for: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. (Seriously my brain only functions in 1 of these modes but I’m working on the other 3!) There’s hope for me yet. I think being a parent encourages you to be your best self and it pushes you to learn new things so here I am! We made a jelly bean run last week out of cardboard tubes from paper towels and toilet paper, then we made several dominoes creations that are very beginner level. After that we had some fun making pom-pom launchers! It was cool to make them but I think we can all agree that the most fun was when we used them against one another. We had a duel an it was a blast! I highly recommend it.👍🏼
6. We have been working on the school work supplied by our amazing daycare caregivers. That has been good to keep the kids busy. I also like to add in some other “curriculum” to go with what they provide. So we have started some seeds to learn about the plant life cycle in a moist paper towel and clear jar for viewing the process with a log book that Jewel practiced her writing while making entries of the seeds happenings-so far none just our watering. We then planted the rest of the seeds and will work together to tend to them daily.
We also did another science project. It was raining a lot so we thought it would be fitting it demonstrate where rain comes from. This was super easy to do and also easy to understand -from my 5 year-old’s perspective anyways. I think the best part for the kids was the water play though. (The only down side is it’s a bit messy, not the worst mess I’ve dealt with though so I’ll handle it.)
7. Jamison at 3, is not fully aware of his letters. He can sing the alphabet but doesn’t recognize which letter is which when shown. So, we are working on the alphabet together. We do a letter each day of the week and I make a craft that is pre-prepared (only takes me 5 minutes to do) ahead of time. I know his interests and he is mainly into animals, trucks, and cars so I try to tailor the activities toward his likes so it goes smoother for everyone. He then puts the crafts together. Then I work with him on his writing the letters at the end. At this point he can recognize and order all the letters to his name and gets excited when he gets them correct. His grand smile and sweet question of “Mommy, are you proud of me?” make it all worth my efforts. We have just finished “D” for dinosaur which he was elated about! He doesn’t always want to do the writing part so I found an idea that can be messy but gets him to do it. I put ice cream sprinkles in a box and have him write the letter I show him on the flash card with a paint brush. It’s kind of like a messier version of an Etch-a-Scetch because you have to shake the sprinkles back into position to write the next new letter. He hasn’t realized that the colorful balls are in fact sprinkles and I haven’t told him otherwise-shhh our little secret!
Jewel is working on her writing skills. So I do get her to write whenever I possibly can. She puts up a big fuss most days though. I had her do a scavenger hunt in the kitchen so I could work with Jamison on his letters. I made her write out 10 things that are smooth and number them as well. She was ready to quit after 3 words. 😔 Telling her that her daycare friends are also doing this homework makes her less resistant for some reason. She does love the “Teach Your Monster to Read” app and “Duo ABC” which helps kids with literacy through repetition and games. I like the Duo ABC because you can trace the letter with your finger on a touch screen to learn how to actually write it! So cool! Both the kids like it and are learning from it.
I set up Duplo Legos with both kids names on each block in a wall-like structure for name recognition and sequence. I laid out the same color and size Legos underneath with their letters on them again so they could replicate the display in the correct sequence. For my daughter, I added numbers to make it more of a challenge. They both did well after a bit of trial and error, Jamison needing more help at 3 than Jewel at 5 did. I’m thinking to expand to this with simple daily morning challenges set up for them ahead of time. Its been good to see them work toward an end goal and be proud of their achievements.
8. We played some games. We made our own indoor basket ball hoop inside with a diaper box and ball pit balls. My son loved it but my daughter could care less.
We made our own Jell-o pudding slime with pantry items I had on hand. Its smelled very weird so Jewel wouldn’t play with it but that didn’t bother Jamison. He played with it twice and made a huge mess the second time. It was 1/4 cup pudding mix, 1 cup corn starch and a 1/3 cup of warm water. ( I had to use less corn starch and more water for the recipe so if you try it just add items together a bit at a time) I thought it would be easy enough to make and it mostly was. But we had cheesecake flavor that was probably the issue right there. I only made one batch and split it in two to color it for each child. The purple is soft and dough-like while the blue one seems hard and dry? 🤷♀️ Anyways, Jamison ran his slime over with several of his trucks while Jewel helped me cook. There was such a pasty mess all over the counter, the chair and the floor. That was the end of our blue slime. The price we pay for a trade-off of quiet engaged kids! At least it does wash well.
https://pin.it/4kUsxRp
We also made our own homemade bubbles and wands from Happy Hooligans blog. It was good, however I think the day we picked wasn’t exactly ideal. It says not to have a windy day but we were just so excited to have a day to be outside after all this cold and rain that we used it. The bubbles did work pretty well and some of them flew high up to the sky above the trees. Many of them popped fast though and I’m assuming that was due to the wind. I would like to try it again on a day with less wind to see if we get a better outcome. The ones coming off the wand were pretty shockingly large! I loved hearing the squealing excitement in my kids when they would pull off the wand. I’ll keep you posted if we do it again and let you know how it went. Definitely a weird list of items for bubbles that you would not expect, personal lubricant being one😳!
I’ve been slowly trying minute to win-it games with the kids. These are really fun and funny! We did the pom-pom and straw one. You have to blow into a straw only to get the pom-pom across the table-no hands are allowed. Since we only went across my coffee table, it was just a quick trail game. Jamison is just so spitty he kept leaking his saliva through the straw and onto the table🤢! It made us all laugh, only immediate family members would want to play this game with him! That was fun though. The next one we tried was with Vaseline on the tips of everyone’s nose and cotton balls on the table. No one could use their hands and they had to bend forward and get the cotton ball to stick to their nose and then drop it into a basket! My kids liked this the best. It made them really silly. We didn’t really keep track of who won or even have real games, it was just fun to try out. Maybe next time we will take it further with a bit of team competition!
9. I’ve been working on character building with the kids. We recently made a sign for a family who has a son with a birthday during this time in order to do a drive-by birthday parade. It made us all feel so excited for him to have a line of cars beeping with firetrucks and policemen speaking over an intercom wishing him a happy birthday! The kids also got excited to see other children too which they haven’t seen in over a month now! P.S. I made Jewel make the sign in order to practice her handwriting and be more involved in the nice deed!
So that about wraps things up for our week! It’s crazy how it flies by so fast and I can’t keep track of the days! I hope this helps give you ideas to keep your family busy and your kids entertained. If you have any ideas that have worked out well I would love to hear them and share them with other families. We are all in this together so pass this along to anyone that would benefit, stay positive and healthy!
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