Category Archives: COVID-19 Outdoors activities

Field Trips During Social Distancing

April 23

Local Trails

We’ve suggested numerous virtual field trips, and we we’ll be adding more below. But the outdoors is still, well out there. Some local trails are open, but if you visit them it is absolutely critical that you maintain at least 6 feet of physical distance. Outside provides some very sound suggestions for minimizing spread of this extremely contagious and dangerous disease. Please read their article before considering a visit to any of the trails below.

Wildrock. The Barn and Nature Playscape are closed but trails are open by appointment.

Ivy Creek Natural Area. Their barn is also closed, but their trails are open. Please follow the safe guidelines in the Outside article. Pay special attention to trail heads and other close areas.

Darden Towe Park, again, playgrounds and educational facilities are closed, but trails are open and include wheelchair accessible trails. Please follow the guidelines for safe outdoors activities.

Virtual Field Trips

Explore Maryland Science Center Activities in your own home. Just as if you were in a physical science center, you can move through a selection of activities, but using materials you are likely to be able to find at home.

You can go on Cultural Field Trips, too. artsandculture.google.com offers virtual museum tours (one led by a penguin!) and also has some creative activities involving works of arts and cell phones.

Enrichment Online. The Night Sky.

April 21.

Tonight should be a very good night for star gazing. The moon is waning and will be at 3%. The next two nights will be even darker, but the skies should be overcast, so get out tonight and do some stargazing. First, figure out where your home is relative to the four cardinal directions. If you have a cellphone, use the compass on your GPS.

Star Chart. This star chart is from the Davis Planetarium at the Maryland Science Center. You may find some of the constellations a little hard to identify in the actual night sky, but watching this video first should help. Now head out and see if you can identify some of the constellations on the chart. Hang onto that chart because you might want it for the next activity.

Starring You. Try doing some constellation yoga. Look at your star chart. Does it suggest any other poses? Lie down on the floor and try posing as a constellation, like Orion or Ursa Major. Have someone take your picture. Send your star chart and the picture to a friend and see if they can guess which constellation you are. Print your picture and draw or paste stars where they would appear on that constellation in a star chart.

Wondering what the stories are behind the constellations? Here’s a video that shares a few stores about the stars grouped around the arrangement we often call the big dipper. And if you that leaves you wanting to know more stories about the starts, download The Legends of the Stars.

Inclusive Enrichment During Quarantine: Backyard Naturalists.

All of today’s fantastic activities come from 10 Backyard Nature Activities on the Appalachian Mountain Be Outdoors Mountain Club website. This website is full of terrific ideas, including a page for COVID-19 activities.

Science

Place a white cloth under a tree, shake the tree and see what drops on the cloth. Follow the link to 10 Backyard Nature Activities and scroll down to Activity 3 for information on on this activity.

Art

Create a gnome house with the materials you collected.

Movement

Walking Bingo. We suggest you take the instructions for Activity 9 and follow their suggestion to create a bingo game. You can use bingo creator or bingo creator nature cards to create cards. Walk around your neighborhood or get out in the country to play this game.

Rock On! April 4.

Art and Literature

What could be a better time than to dig into the Harry Potter series, whether for the first time, the second, or the 30th? This series is especially suitable for older readers. For younger readers, see below.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is perfect for today’s theme, and can be downloaded at Jefferson Madison Regional Library. Remember, you can download a temporary library card, too.

An audible download is available for people who read by listening.

Here’s a guide to finding your own rock, but don’t stop with one. You’ll need two: one to keep and one to share in the next activity.

Movement

Painted Rocks Hunt. Join the painted rocks craze. Paint a rock (if you celebrate Easter, it could be fun to paint it like an Easter Egg.)

Now hide your rock somewhere in the community, and post a clue on Cville Rocks. If you don’t live in Cville, you might have a similar group in your community. While you’re on the page, look for posts about other hidden rocks, and see if you can find them. PLEASE, DURING THIS TIME OF SOCIAL DISTANCING, TAKE PICTURES BUT DON’T TOUCH THE ROCKS YOU FIND! And when you take the pictures, don’t forget to tag enrichmentalliance on Instagram.

Science and Math

Make your own rock. Even after you find your own rocks, it’ll still be fun to make one yourself. Don’t forget to tag us at enrichmentalliance.

First Friday Gallery Crawl. April 3.

Art and Literature

Access Arts Virtual Art Show. It was a huge disappointment to miss the annual opening of the Access Arts Show at Carver Recreation Center. This show features the works of artist with differing abilities, and is one of the highlights of our year. View the show remotely through our link, but come back as soon as Carver reopens and see these beautiful works in person.

Art Apart. Take part in a collaboration by the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative and Charlottesville Safe Routes to School, by creating a work of art and displaying it in your window. The link on your left will tell you how to get your work on a map so others can find it. Try some of yesterday’s activities to create your work, or see the cool science ideas below.

Science and Math

The Beauty of Science. Among these intriguing science experiments are several that would actually make gorgeous works of art. Maybe you have a place you can display them outside your house for the Art Apart exhibit. Or take pictures of your experiments and share the pictures.

Movement

Gallery At A Distance. Now go back to to the Art Apart page and you will find a map showing all the art work entered in the exhibit. Take a walk to enjoy the beautiful spring day and the beautiful creations. Take pictures and tag enrichmentalliance on Instagram.

Spoken Word Poetry. Shape Art. April 2.

It’s National Poetry Month! Many of our posts this month will begin with poems or poem prompts and continue with themes suggested by the poems or prompts.

Art and Literature

This young poet presents a delightful poem, but we wanted to give math a chance to answer back, so his lament to mathematics is followed up with some awesome activities around a geometric theme. Spoken word poetry is heavily influenced by hip hop and rap and is much more likely to have rhymes and strong meter than most contemporary poems. Watch this video and try reading a poem aloud. It can be your own poem or a poem you’ve read.

Movement

So, maybe the poet doesn’t know just how cool geometry actually can be. This guy does.

Science and Math

Now that you have PROOF that geometry is cool, see what you can do with geometric shapes.

Geometric Art Pinterest Board. This board will provide lots of inspiration for artists who like to get a few ideas and then let their own imaginations run.

Geometric Sunburst. (Adapted activity) But some people prefer to watch someone model drawing before they draw. If that’s you, this very soothing video will show you how to create a sunburst. Check out some of their other videos too, It may be helpful to pause the video, copy their action, and then start the video again, continuing until you complete your work.

April 1. And you know what that means!!!

Today’s activities are all about tricks.

Math and Science

Our director, MaryAnna, learned this mind-blowing card trick from her mother as a child and reports that no one she knows has ever been able to figure out how it works. It will work every time, but YOU MUST COUNT CAREFULLY. Practice counting smoothly, too, so that your friend won’t understand how you got to your answer. You can try this at home with your family, or use a phone app. Look up card tricks and mathematical card trips for more jaw dropping tricks.

Movement

Magic tricks using a any pen you have on hand. (Until you don’t). As they say, it’s all a slight of hand. Practice these tricks in front of a mirror, or video tape yourself. Then put on a magic show.

Art and Literature

Older children and teens, download a trickster tale in the library and record or illustrate it for a young friend or sibling. If you don’t have a library card, you can download a temporary one. If you want to share your story publicly, you will need to to retell it in your own words or you may get into copy right issues. Here’s a link to the JMRL catalog, filtered by “trickster tales ebooks.” Look for books with “J” in the call number.

Here are two traditional trickster tales read aloud. One of them is signed in a combination of American and British Sign Language. The stories are suitable as stand-alones for younger children.

Zomo The Rabbit.

Hare and Hyena.

Signed in British and American ASL.

Games for One. The Real Story. March 31

Movement

Seven Up

Seven-up is just one of the games you can play alone on the Very Well Family website. Make up some games of your own and share them with us..

Science and Math

Solitaire Games You Probably Don’t Know

5 Single Player Card Games. Getting tired of the same old solitaire game? Here are some intriguing, and challenging games you might not know.

Art and Literature

The Real Story.

Retell a fairy tale. There’s always more than one side to every story. This website gives you some great ideas on how to write different versions of favorite fairy and folk tales. If you loved Ella Enchanted, you’ll love this activity.

Story baskets. Adapted. If you are the kind of person who likes props and visuals, fill a basket with action figures, plastic houses, and dragon puppets, whatever you can find that belongs in a fairy tale and use it to retell a favorite story. Share your pictures with your friends and be sure to tag #enrichmentalliance.

MARCH 30 FIELD TRIPS AT HOME

Science and Math

Make your own science museum. Fill boxes, baskets, bins, whatever you have on hand, with hands-on science materials. This link will give you some ideas. You are not likely to have the slick looking materials in their images lying around the house, but see what you can do instead. Can you find a measuring tape? A magnet? Share pictures of YOUR science kit with us on Instagram: enrichmentalliance.

Movement

Make your own fitness center. If you have cardboard, tape, socks, etc, you have a fitness center. This link is full of suggestions on how to put it all together and turn a corner of your home into your own gym. Post pictures of your equipment and share them with enrichmentalliance.

Art and Literature

Make your own library. The link on the left shares a few ideas for creating your own reading nook. Once you look at these ideas, you’ll probably have more ideas of your own. Make a reading nook and please, send us a picture at enrichmentalliance on Instagram. Now all you need are some books, right? That’s easier than you might know.

The Library of Congress has books available online.

Adaptive Reading Choices. Want an interesting story, but light reading? Try downloading some high/low readers.

WHAT’S OUT THERE?

MARCH 27

Movement

Look up at any window. You might see a bear. Or if our idea takes off, maybe favorite gaming images instead. Communities around the country are taking the children’s rhyme “Going on a bear hunt” and turned it into a game for the COVID-19 quarantine. The link on the left tells you about the game in Augusta County. Take a walk around Augusta towns and see for yourself.

This sounds like so much fun, we think you could be excused for stealing the idea and giving it your own twist.

Network with your friends to pick a favorite gaming character from any video game. Have everyone print pictures of the character and put them in their windows. You might have figurines or stuffed toys you can put out also.

Use social networking to get the word out to get friends and neighbors. And friends of friends. And neighbors of neighbors. Ad infinitum. In addition to the apps you usually use, neighborhood apps and neighborhood list serves might be especially helpful. Once you get the word out, take a walk every day to to see if the character you suggested is showing up in any windows.

Remember, this will only happen if you get the word out to lots of people.

Art and Literature

Sidewalk Art. Do you remember the sidewalk art scene in Mary Poppins? How the sidewalk came alive with the work of a street artist? Bring your sidewalk alive with sidewalk art ideas. Or draw a gaming character from the activity above, or a bird from the activity below, and encourage walkers to come find your masterpiece.  

Science and Math

Birdzilla. Download this bird bingo game, and mark the spot when you see a matching bird.

Bird Bingo Adapted. If listening works better than looking, familiarize yourself with these birdsongs. Each player picks five birds to listen for. Who will hear all five of their birds first?