Category Archives: Family

Things For Kids To Do While You Are In Quarantine (and they won’t even realize they are all educational!)

  • Invent a new board game
  • Use chalk art to turn your entire driveway (or front porch, or back deck, or garage floor) into a mural
  • Write letters to people you know
  • Make hand made cards to mail to strangers in nursing homes
  • Bake cookies
  • Plan a menu based on ingredients at home
  • Learn to cook
  • Watch animal videos (Cincinnati Zoo, Shedd Aquarium)
  • Make up fun songs
  • Read Shel Silverstein online and then write silly poems like he does
  • Create a dance routine to a favorite KidzBop song
  • Write a rap about the period table of elements, (or the Greek alphabet, or mutiplication tables)
  • Film your rap on TikTok or SnapChat or Facebook live
  • Plant a container garden
  • Do a multi-week experiment about what kind of music helps your container garden grow faster, (find a “scientific method” chart online to help with recording their hypothesis and testing it)
  • Detail the inside of the car
  • Video chat grandma
  • Teach grandma how to use her video chat first
  • Read big books together (Harry Potter, Narnia, Animal Farm, Moby Dick, Alice in Wonderland)
  • Do YouTube videos for family meditation
  • Do online exercise videos from LesMills or your local YMCA
  • Measure all the things
  • Design charts to show the measurements
  • Create a stop-action film with Legos or play dough or stuffed animals (or, if you really enjoy Bob’s Burgers, with a pound of raw hamburger)
  • Write a movie script, design sets with items on hand, film it, post it online
  • Let them find Pinterest activities they can do with common household items
  • Build the Best. Fort. Ever.
  • Draw their own comic books
  • Make salt dough and play with it
  • Memorize something (Scripture verses, your favorite monologue from a movie, the preamble to the Constitution, all 50 states in alphabetical order)
  • Hide Easter eggs around the house
  • Do old fashioned calisthenics
  • Organize toys (NOT YOU… let them do it and then be okay with how they do it)
  • Create a time capsule to open in 10 years
  • Bury it in the back yard
  • Hide a “treasure” and then make a treasure map for others to find it
  • Use paper plates or construction paper to make giant Scrabble letters and play word games
  • Help change the oil in the car
  • Learn how to change a flat tire
  • Do easy science projects like eggs in various liquids, or testing air pollution, or the effect of germs on bread (all on Pinterest plus a million more)

Things I Am Thankful For

  • My family
  • My friends who are like family
  • Adorable grandbabies
  • My new condo
  • Sunsets
  • Ocean waves
  • Vacations
  • Ice cream
  • Sparkly swimming pools
  • Whitening toothpaste
  • Fall colors
  • Holidays
  • Clean diagnoses
  • Safe transportation
  • Clean water
  • Opportunities
  • Mentors
  • The smell of new books
  • The smell of old books
  • Bonfires
  • The susurrus of wind through trees
  • The Boundary Waters
  • Beaches
  • Laundry in my home
  • YouTube tutorials

No photo description available.

October

  • My dad’s birthday
  • Cold nights
  • Bon fires
  • Brilliant foilage
  • Hoodies
  • Tall boots
  • Crunchy leaves
  • Costumes
  • Kids laughing

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Leaving On a Jet Plane… and a Cruise Ship… and tenders…

  • Chicago
  • Fort Lauderdale
    • Blake Shelton concert
    • Carnival Cruise Lines
  • Nassau, Bahamas
    • Nassau Native Quest
  • Half Moon Cay, Bahamas
  • Turks & Caicos
  • Dominican Republic
    • La Casa En Playa
  • Florida
  • Illinois

Swimming at Grand Cayman