Fun while social distancing

Fun while social distancing? What!? Now that we're passing a week of this, you might be asking if that's even possible. I'm here to tell you that it IS! Below, in no particular order, I will share with you some of my favourite home-bound activities to try while we all try to keep our sanity. You don't need fancy schedules done up - this is home-funning not homeschooling. But you can still provide rich learning activities for your kids. After all, kids learn best through play! Just remember the 5 M's: Movement, Make, Music, Motivation, Mood:

• Movement - our bodies, and especially our kids bodies need movement. Lots of it! It can be hard to incorporate movement when you're mostly stuck at home, but not impossible! Here are a few ideas:
  • Make an obstacle course in your living room! Practice prepositions (in on under, etc) as you let the kids jump off the couch and climb over chairs and under tables. Involve the kids in planning it out. You can even add masking tape to show the route. The best is when you join in and do it too and everyone can get a good laugh about how much harder it is for Mom, Dad or other caregivers! Laughing is the best medicine. Give them instructions and let them follow, then switch it around and have them give you instructions!
  • Play sneaky statues (aka Night at the Museum) - One person is the Museum Curator and all the others are statues. When the curator looks away, the statues move. Don't get caught moving! Otherwise you're the new curator. This is a great way for kids to learn to pay attention to eye gaze and eye contact!
  • Contests - See who can jump the highest, run up the stairs the fastest, do the most push ups. Make home-made awards for the contest winners.
  • Dancing parties! We love our living room dancing parties. My girls are very into Taylor Swift right now.
  • And, remember, as long as you continue to observe the social distancing rules, the outdoors are not off limits! Scavenger hunts (both indoor and outdoor) have been really fun. Involve the kids in listing all the things they think they might see. You can sort them into Easy, Harder, and Hardest and allot points to each category. Or you can do Color scavenger hunts (find something red) or literacy scavenger hunts (find something that rhymes with "far"). The options are endless!

It's usually a bit messier than this when I do it at my house!

• Make - Kids also will need a creative outlet while stuck at home! Not to mention, art projects help with fine motor skills, attention, pre-writing (or writing), concept learning, and a whole host of other important developmental skills! Here are some ideas to try: 
  
  • Grab some cardboard and tape. Any size pieces will do, but if you have big ones, all the better! Tape the cardboard into some kind of creation. A little tilting house, a robot, a rocket ship. If your pieces of cardboard are too small, feel free to make it a rocket ship for one of your child's stuffies or a house for a small pet! Paint the creation and then PLAY! 
    
  • Paint rocks - This can also double as a kindness activity. Let your kids find some rocks while out on a walk. Paint them and then next time you're out on your walk, leave them around to brighten others' days.
    
  • Chalk - Get the kids out, even if just on a deck, and let them go wild with chalk! Draw a hopscotch game to get the kids moving, or draw a setting for a story to get their language flowing. Draw a house with many different rooms and play pretend as you go from one to the other. 
    
  • Yes Art - This is a great time to let kids go wild AND let them feel in control in a time when they probably aren't feeling a whole lot of control! With my own kids I do a thing called "Yes Art" (my now 7 year old named it when she was 4). In this activity, I get out all kinds of art supplies (and other objects, like cardboard, sticks, old bottle caps, anything you can find). The kids can ask for anything and I HAVE to say yes. Then they glue and glob and mix it all together. Most often, these are their most amazing creations, but even when they aren't so great looking, it's ALWAYS the best time. Just remember to include your kids in the clean-up too!! That is the other piece of Yes Art. When the parent says, "Time to clean up," the kids have to say...you guessed it, "YES!!"
    
  • Making doesn't have to always be art. Give them some lego or other blocks and let them go wild with their creations. Let them make forts with all the sheets in the house. Make a giant house by stacking books (just be gentle with them because books can be delicate!
    
  • More non-art Make ideas can be found in the kitchen! Make dinner, muffins, cookies, cakes. Baking is a great family at-home activity because it always has the best reward!!

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• Music - Music can lighten a mood when things get heavy. Mom and Dad talking about the news too much? Siblings fighting over lego? Mom freaking out because the house is a mess because 4 people have been crammed inside for days? Pop on an oldies playlist and shake the sillies out! Here are a few other ways to incorporate Music:
  • Find different ways to make sound out of everyday objects - bang pots and pans, scrape a comb against a shelf, make cymbals out of pot lids. Try to copy each other's rhythms
  • Pass the beat - Going along with copying each other's rhythms, once you've each found an "instrument," sit in a circle. One person does a simple beat and "passes" it to the next person by either saying their name, pointing at them, or looking at them (a good way to practice eye contact). Change up the start person each time.
  • Music lessons - If your kid is really looking for something more structured to occupy some of their time, lots of music teachers are currently offering music lessons via Zoom or Skype! If you have a piano, keyboard, or ukulele, this could be a good option to add a bit more routine to your otherwise (awesomely) unprogrammed days. In Vancouver, my colleague Melody, a Music Therapist, is providing online ukulele lessons. Contact me if you'd like more information. Or you can email her directly!
• Motivation - Make sure you're following your child's motivation. Believe me, if they aren't motivated, you're getting nowhere. For example, my 7 year old refused (REFUSED) to leave the house a few days ago. It was an absolutely gorgeous day out, so I was going bonkers. I tried offering bikerides, hikes, even just going and drawing with chalk. Nothing. Then I remembered that she has been obsessed with dragons lately. I said "why don't we go on a walk and pretend we're dragons on a quest!" Boom, she was out the door. Running around, flapping her dragon wings, and talking a mile a minute about the quest we were on to find the missing piece of the nightmare stone and we were a team of... Well, I'll spare you the details! But, suffice to say, tapping into her motivation is what gave us a successful outing. This is what we do as SLPs as well, I can present all of the speech and language activities I know, but I don't follow what my student is motivated by, I don't get much buy in! Here are some generic activities you can do that will go well with whatever your kid is interested in:
  • Offer to write a story (or jointly write a story, depending on your child's age and level) about one of their interests. (We're partway through a dragon's quest tale right now.) Illustrate the story together, drawing fun pictures of whatever your child is interested in.
  • Play pretend - Pretend play is SO important to children's development of language, problem solving, and social skills. Use figurines, or just pretend to be the characters yourself. Kid into trains? Pretend you're a train stuck on a broken track! Kid into mermaids? Pretend your whole house is underwater and you're mermaids swimming around. Use those language skills to describe what the rooms and characters look like.
  • Use blocks (or boxes or books or any other everyday objects) to build a little setting. Build whatever setting your child is interested in. Train tracks, a busy city, a forest, a race track. 
  • Read books about things your child likes.

My own kids planning out a comic book they're writing about dragons and werewolves.

• Mood - By now, our kids' moods are probably a little bit wobbly. There is a lot of stress circulating around, and even if they aren't fully aware of it, they are more than likely feeling some of that stress trickle down to them. We as adults can't even fully make sense of what is happening; nothing like this has ever happened before. for kids, this is even tougher. Be sure to be attentive to your child's moods. Give them the space they need, as well as the attention they need. Make sure to incorporate some calming time and some movement (see above) time into each day. Some ideas are below:
  • Take a family breathing break a few times a day. At a certain point in the day (you can even set an alarm!), everyone can stop what you're doing and take 3 big breaths together. In through the nose and out through the mouth. After that, go back to whatever you're doing.
  • Do some meditation together. Sit in a circle and close your eyes. There are lots of apps offering guided meditation that families can do together. We do a CD called Sitting Still Like a Frog. Otherwise, just sitting for a few minutes (or even seconds) to recenter can go a long way.
  • Check in once a day with feelings. Over dinner, we often will relate our "peaches and pits" of the day. Tell one thing that you liked and one thing you didn't like about each day.
  • Make sure kids know that all feelings are alright. It's normal in this stressful time to feel angry or confused or even sad as they might miss their friends and normal routines. Let them know that they can feel any way they want, but that not all behaviour is okay. If they are becoming aggressive, talk with your child about other options for showing and dealing with those behaviours. If you need support with this, a therapist or an OT specializing in emotional regulation might be a good resource to look into. If you're in the Vancouver area and need some help finding the resources you need, feel free to contact me and I can help you out.
• Movies - Wait, you said just 5 M's! Well, let's be honest, when all else fails, sometimes you need to just pop on a movie. Or flip on over to my other blog post about all the enriching things you can do with a screen! Because, let's be honest, we're going to be doing a bit of screen time these days!

Good luck to you all. And if you have any other ideas or questions, feel free to comment!