With all the craziness going on in the world, home is the safest place to be right now. But how do you keep your kids engaged and entertained for an extended period of time? As a teacher I brainstormed some ideas to keep your (elementary) kids busy and their brains challenged.
Monkey see monkey do
First off, there is currently a lot of stress and anxiety in our world and our kids feel that. Don’t feel like you must rush into keeping up with curriculum. It’s okay to spend some days watching movies and just take some time to create a settled, calm environment in your household. However, kids (and ourselves) do need some routine and structure in our lives to keep a sense of normalcy.
I Need More Structure!
If you are looking to implement more structure in your home, I’ll link a video here. This is Jordan Page, she has some really helpful ideas on how to keep sane and organized during this (temporary) new normal. Go check her out, if you end up down her YouTube rabbit hole she has amazing hacks on basically everything in life.
Below I’ve put together a few different examples and links for some resources, videos and ideas to keep your monkeys busy!
Fun Educational Apps
Epic! -This app you can try for 30 days free and it has 40,000 books right at your fingertips. My students love this app because it give you different options to read, listen to audio books, comics, quizzes and you can even create your own quiz that other people can take. My kids would’ve spent hours on this app if I let them!
Mathletics -Many students would be able to access this at home for free if they already have a school account. They would just need to type in their username and password. However, if they do not already have an account you can access a free trial to see if it is a good fit for your family.
Coding - This is the language of the future and is already apart of our everyday life whether we realize it or not. Code.org is a fantastic site that is filled with problem solving disguised as games. This was another favorite site my students loved.
Bridge Designer -This website is a little more specific to structure and design but I used this with my grade 2/3 class and they loved it! It could be used all the way up to middle years as well.
Teachers Pay Teachers -This isn’t an app but a great resource for virtually anything you could possibly need. The great part of this website is it is all created by teachers and contains a lot of free content. Word searches, coloring pages, full units, etc.
Physical Activity Ideas
Cosmic Kids Yoga -There are so many different videos and themes for all ages and genders. I will link their YouTube page here.
Just Dance -If you do not have the game, my students love when I YouTube different just dances and they follow along.
GoNoodle -This is a website of fun videos, games and body breaks.
We Move - This is a local business offering online classes for both kids and adults!