I know this is a stressful and difficult time for all families, but there are still a lot of fun ways to keep your children actively engaged at home! Below are some fun activities listed, that your children can participate while in quarantine at home with you:
Sensory Activities:
- Pull and push siblings on a sheet, blanket, or in a laundry basket
- Build a fort with couch cushions, pillows, blankets, and chairs
- Shovel sand, dirt, mud, or garden
- Play tug of war
- Play with playdough
- Make your own “at home” paint and slime
- Play “row row row your boat” sitting on the floor with a sibling (pushing and pulling one another)
- Deep pressure hugs and squishes under a cushion or pillow
- Massages
- Finger paint
- Blowing bubbles
- Kicking a soccer ball
- Playing basketball
- Playing with moon sand or kinetic sand
- Laying in a dark tent or fort
Exercises:
- Yoga
- Crab walk
- Mountain climbers
- Cross crawling
- Cheetah run
- Bear walk
- Jumping jacks
- Gorilla walk
- Frog jump
- Balance activities
- Running a race with siblings
- Army crawl
- Push-ups and sit-ups
- Medicine ball squats
- Wall push-ups and wall sits
Regulating the Body:
- Simon says
- Freeze dance
- Red light, green light
- Musical chairs
- Hide and seek
- In house scavenger hunts
- Hop scotch
- Mazes with tape
- Hot potato
- Keep up the ball or balloon with the child’s legs
Brain Games:
- Board games
- Mazes
- Word searches
- Puzzles (increasing in puzzle pieces)
- Matching activity and games
- Make an obstacle course or maze throughout the house with tape
Crafts:
- Stringing beads or pasta onto a bracelet or necklace
- Q-tip painting a rainbow or other pictures
- Making a flower scene using paint and a plastic fork to make a “tulip flower”
- Paper plate fish, caterpillar, or jelly fish
- Monster tissue boxes
- Thumbprint family tree
Fine Motor Fun:
- Use tong or tweezers to sort items into water bottles or baskets (can sort by color, size, item, etc.)
- Roll playdough to make letters, numbers, or shapes
- Play hide and seek items into playdough or theraputty (the child will use their finger strength to find the hidden items)
- Munching ball (cut a hole into a tennis ball, glue googly eyes, and the child will have to squeeze the tennis ball open and feed the ball small objects)
- Cutting activities (make a pizza and cut the cheese and topping and then use glue, cut playdough, etc.)
- Pearler beads or rainbow loom
