Activities for you and the Kids when you have to Stay Home

Whether you're on a home staycastion, looking for extra activities anytime, or you're trying to keep your kids from going nuts during the current quaratine - here are some great options my kids have lots of fun with, that most any family can start doing.

Gardening - Regardless of your kids age (mine are 8 and 15 currently), you can get them started with gardening by introducing them to simple things like:

• Planting some easy to grow plants in starter pots. Easy first choices are beans, peas, sunflowers, chives, potatoes, garlic, onions, squashes, strawberries, lettuce, and pumpkins.
• Digging up grass and tilling the land to ready it for seeds and starts.
• Putting dirt in pots for filling up pots and plantars.
• Digging and over turning rocks for worms.
• Starting a compost for left over foods.
• Watering and feeding the plants. 
• Using wheelbarrows.
• Pulling up non-medicinal weeds. 
• Identifying and allowing medicinal weeds to grow (like yarrow!)
• Garden Art: Stepping Stones, Standing Stones, Painting Plantars, upcycling old Shoes into plantars, making Fairy Doors to put at the base of trees, and making Walkways.
• Building and Decorating Bird Houses, Bee Hotels, and making Hutches for various other nearby wildlife that might enjoy cohabitating in your garden space or yard. 

Unschooling - The kids pick a topic they want to learn about; which can be literally anything, and you find a way to wrap in some grade appropriate learning. My oldest wanted to learn how to cook and how to read Tarot Cards, and my youngest wanted to learn about Show Cars with Hydralics and how to make Cosplay Costumes. All of those were awesome topics to explore, and super easy to wrap in everything from math to anthropology. 


Responsibilities - Sure, they don't usually sound fun to kids at first, but there are ways you can make chores and responsibilities fun to accomplish. Though whether or not the chores in question ever become fun enough to volunteer for them, giving the kids regular responsibilities is good for them. It builds their self esteem, and helps them learn to self-soothe when they need to accomplish the less fun things that come up in life. Use any of these ones below and add your own. Try your best to teach them to your kids with grace and gratitude for the opportunity to get that time with them, and you'll also be modeling another set of great skills for them, like: Delayed Gratification, Planning, Teamwork, Interdependence, Foresight, Self Care, and Personal Empowerment.

These responsibilities have either been fun for the kids, or they were easy enough for them to do that there isn't much struggle from them when they were assigned to them:

• Weed Whacking (for older kids)
• Vaccuming (some kids love it, some hate it)
• Feeding Pets (small pets for younger kids)
• Keeping specific safe and easy to reach windows clean.
• Mowing the lawn (extra fun if you have a riding lawn mower)
• Watering bushes and ornamentals inside and outside the house.
• Being in charge of changing pillows, covers, and blankets on furniture.
• Making sure certain lights are turned off and on at certain times of day.
• In charge of keeping certain counter space and tabletops clean and cleared

Adventuring in Nature - I'm putting this one lower on the list, as I know not everyone has access to nearby woodlands or wild spaces to explore, especially in any areas with stay-at-home orders.

• Going for walks in super-local woodland parks (caution on this one during quarantine)
• If you have any woodlands near or behind your house, you can explore them with the kids by learning which plants are native and which are invasive. Then by putting effort into removing harmful invasive plants, you can clear space and make trails, that allow you to go deeper into the forrest and see what you can see. If you brush up on basic mycology, tree identification, and wild medicinal herb foraging, then you can all learn about mushrooms, trees, and the various things that grow naturally. All of which are great skills to have regardless of what's going on around us all. 
• If it's safe to do so, and you learn how to work WITH the plant beings in the wild spaces, you can build living forts, hangout spaces, and meditation spaces.

I'll update and add to this post over time. For right now, these are great starters for you and the kids.

If you have an fun additions that have worked well for you, feel free to add them in the comments below so others can enjoy them too!