3 GREAT Ways To Keep Your Kids Stimulated During Time Off From School

Many of us are adjusting to a new normal of having our kids at home 24/7. And many are probably hearing the phrase “I’m bored” over and over. There are some ways that you can keep them engaged. I am going to explain 3 GREAT ways to keep your kids stimulated during time off from school. Sitting in their rooms watching Netflix, YouTube and perusing social media is probably not great for their development or well being. Us parents have to get creative on how we can keep them engaged and stimulated for potentially many days off from school.

MAKE A SCHEDULE

The first GREAT way to keep your kids engaged during an extended break from school is to set up a schedule. Kids, like adults, are much more productive when there is a schedule to follow. They are used to being in school and having to follow a daily routine. Elementary age kids have short segments, middle school and high school kids have 60 – 75 minute segments for each class or subject. When creating your schedule it is important to keep this in mind. If you have elementary age kids keep the segments to 30 minutes or less and if you have middle to high school aged kids keep the segments to around an hour. Here is a sample schedule that I’m using with my middle school and high school aged kids. This is just a sample. You can adjust it to meet your kids needs. And feel free to share your own ideas in the comments section.

8:00 – 8:30 Wake up/Breakfast/Get Dressed

8:30 – 9:15 Exercise (We will set up some type of circuit they can do to start the day)

9:15 – 10:00 Clean Room (Go through clothes that they don’t wear that we can donate)

10:00 – 11:00 Music (Use YouTube videos to learn to play an instrument)

11:00 – 11:30 Outdoor Sports Play

11:30 – 12:00 Free Time

12:00 – 12:30 Lunch

12:30 – 1:30 Spring Cleaning around the house (We will have tasks that they can choose)

1:30 – 2:30 Read or Educational Website work

2:30 – 3:00 Play a Game

3:00 – 3:45 Spring Cleaning task or other school related online work

3:45 – 4:00 Goal Setting/Planning for next day

4:00 – 5:30 Free Time

5:30 – 6:00 Dinner

6:00 – 8:00 Family Movie or Games

LEARN TO PLAY AN INSTRUMENT

Another GREAT way to keep your kids engaged is to have them learn how to play an instrument. You might think that is impossible without lessons. But it is actually pretty easy and your kids will love taking ownership of it by choosing their lessons or songs that they can learn. I am a self taught guitar player, learning everything from YouTube videos. My kids have also started trying to learn to play an instrument on their own. Their problem is they haven’t had consistent time dedicated to working on this. With extra time off from school they will have no problem being able to carve out time every day to do this. Some good instruments to learn on are piano, guitar, or ukulele. You can pick up cheap ukulele’s on amazon or at your local store. I will put some links below to some cheap guitar’s and ukulele’s. So once they have an instrument they can search how to videos on YouTube. There is everything from fundamental lessons to lessons on how to play songs. And the great thing is that they are all free. I myself have found great joy in learning to play an instrument on my own and it is a lot of fun around a campfire. I will work on gathering some good links to YouTube videos for a future blog. There literally are thousands of good videos.

Click on these links if you are looking for a good beginner instrument:

Beginner Ukulele from Amazon

Beginner Guitar from Amazon

Beginner Keyboard from Amazon

COMMUNITY SERVICE

The third GREAT way to keep your kids stimulated during the break is to pay it forward and teach them about community service and helping others. There are many nursing homes, hospitals, retirement homes that have restricted visitors. I’m sure they would appreciate receiving a letter or card wishing them well, hearing a joke, or giving them some positive/motivational quotes or scripture. This is a great way to teach your kids to look outside of themselves and do something special for others without gain for themselves. And it is a great way to keep them engaged in writing. They will feel good about themselves being able to do something for somebody that could use a positive interaction. You can order stamps online so that you don’t have to leave the house or personally deliver these to drop off.

When I first told our kids that we were doing this schedule, our 12 year old was instantly excited and couldn’t wait to have some routine back with some tasks she could check off. Our 16 year old had the typical response of a teenager. “Why do we have to do that?” She went to bed grumpy about having to wake up and do this. After the first day of this, I can honestly say that both kids enjoyed the schedule and routine. They both were laughing during their entire workout this morning and didn’t complain once all day or say I’m bored.

Some other ideas:

Remodel/Rearrange/Paint bedrooms

Make a photo album

Learn a different language online

Make a family tree