Activities for Parents and Children During the COVID-19 Quarantine
Try these activities with children while you are at home during the quarantine!
● Visit Virtually. Using an online virtual map with photographs, take a virtual walk from your childhood home to your childhood elementary school and tell your children the memories that come up for you. You can also “explore” places you might like to visit, or have already gone, such as a theme park, a different neighborhood, or where grandparents live. Here are some websites offering virtual visits:
- Free “Virtual” Museum Visits
- Explore.com Live Nature Cams: View different live nature scenes from around the world!
- Aquarium Live! – Online academy to learn about the ocean with online educators and interactive programs
- Continue your child’s science learning with Stuck at Home Science, available on the #CaliforniaScienceCenter website! These free educational activity guides and videos are designed for families to explore, investigate and have fun learning together without leaving home. All activities use easy-to-find household supplies and are appropriate for a variety of ages. New activities released every weekday at 10 a.m. at californiasciencecenter.org/stuckathomescience.
- National Parks Live Cams & Ranger Talks
- Levitt LA – Watch Live Music Concerts: www.instagram.com/levitt.la
- Attend Michelle Obama’s Monday Livestream Story Time Series! More information: http://www.pbs.org/about/blogs/news/mondays-with-michelle-obama-story-times-with-penguin-random-house-and-pbs-kids-streaming-on-youtube-and-facebook-start-monday-april-20-12-noon-et/
- Virtual Arboretum Garden Visits! https://www.arboretum.org/digital-arboretum/at-home-adventures/
- Los Angeles Zoo: Bringing the Zoo to You
- Virtual Zoo Event: Wild for the Planet
● Try Parent-Child Plank Pose. It strengthens your core — abdominal, back, hips and pelvis — which can help you avoid pain in your back, shoulders, knees and other areas. Lie facedown, raising yourself up on your forearms. Keeping your body straight and gaze down, holding for 10-30 seconds. How many times can you repeat?
- Check out Comic Kids Yoga for some additional kid-friendly yoga poses!
● Have an Alphabet Day. Have your child choose a letter in the evening — any letter. The next day, create activities surrounding things that begin with that letter. For example, if the letter is “L”, you might include a lemon in something you eat that day, think of animals that begin with “L”, and come up with silly phrases where each word begins with “L”, like “Lovely Little Leopard”.
● Create Your Own Workout. Create your own “high intensity” workout with your family. Each person chooses their favorite moves, such as lunges, jumping jacks, squats, or even hops. Using a timer, do each workout move for 20 seconds, then take a 10-second break. Do four sets of each move, then take a 30 second break. This “interval training” is fun, fast-paced and really gets hearts pumping!
- Check out this resource for at-home workouts with kids! Sesame Street Communities: Learning At Home – Physical Movement
● DIY Paper Beads. Make beads using just old paper — catalogues, magazines or even wrapping paper — glue and toothpicks. Cut a strip of paper as wide as you wish the bead to be. (Cut your paper an even width all the way down, or have it get narrower, so that the bead has more texture.) Wrap the paper around the toothpick tightly. (If you are using angled paper, start rolling the wider end first around the toothpick.) Glue the end of the paper to the rolled bead and let dry. If you wish, coat the bead with more glue to make it strong and shiny.
● Create a Cloud in a Jar. With just a glass jar with a lid, hot water, ice and matches (or hairspray), you can teach your child about how clouds form. Put a couple inches of hot water into the jar. Put ice into the jar lid. Light a match, blow it out and place inside the jar (or spray a little hairspray) to help make the vapor more visible. (Water vapor sticks to smoke or hairspray and serves as a cloud “seed”.) Quickly place the lid, ice up, over the jar opening. Soon, vapor will begin to form over the water. The ice-filled lid on top cools the warm air in the jar, causing it to condense on smoke or hairspray, forming a cloud!
