Category Archives: COVID-19 activities for children

Gifts Children Can Make at Home

April 6-7

Bath Bombs. This is just so cool. Make bath bombs with household ingredients. Be creative about using items you have on hand if you can’t find the decorative silicon ice trays.

Pipe Cleaner and Yarn Trivets. Making these lovely trivets or coasters is a simple activity, but these instructions do require a glue gun. Try craft glue, tacky glue, or paste glue if you don’t have a glue gun and/or an adult to supervise.

Once you’ve made your gifts, you’ll need a card. Wouldn’t a pop-up card be especially fun?

And you’ll need some wrapping paper of course. You can make that with supplies on-hand. These instructions call for a sea sponge, but experiment with other materials.

Every great celebration involves food. Here’s a Fruit Salad that could be a side dish or a dessert. It’s a light, simple dish a child can prepare, with or without assistance depending on age and ability. Consider substituting low fat yogurt for the sour cream and/or pudding.

Field Trips in Quarantine

May 4-5 Aquaria

(That’s the plural of aquarium not an astrological sign, in case you weren’t sure.)

As you may have heard by now, the penguins are taking field trips in aquaria (that’s the plural of aquarium. I just said that, right?) Join them on their tour of The Florida Aquarium.

Staff at The North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores are working incredibly hard to keep young people engaged in learning about marine life during the pandemic with activities and an animal of the day. They even have a virtual bookshelf.

Now you know enough to make your own aquarium, and you don’t even need live animals to do it. Check out this Pinterest Board to get some ideas for making an aquarium diorama. Maybe you’ll want to make two aquariums. No wait, that’s aquaria.

Activities During Quarantine: Printmaking and Foil Art

May 2-3

This promises to be a very lovely weekend, so get outside to collect some natural materials for these captivating art works.

Foil Art. Instructions for this activity suggest drawing with glue. The effect is marvelous, but here’s a suggestion: gather some natural objects and glue them under the cardboard as well.

Sun Prints. You may have seen commercially available paper for sun prints, but did you know you can make them if you have acrylic paints and a few other supplies?

We like to start every month with a gallery crawl. Visit the National Gallery print collections online to see some examples of beautiful prints through the centuries and from all over the world.

Quarantine Activities: National Poetry Month

April 30- May 1

The end of National Poetry Month is not an end at all. It’s the beginning of a new year of exploring the many gifts reading and writing poetry can bring into our lives. So we end April and move into May with a few ideas to keep you reading and writing throughout the year.

Blackout Poetry is a type of “found poetry” that involves darkening sections of previously published writing in order to create a poem. While this type of poetry often involves the use of black markers, it can be particularly creative and exciting to use colored media to create a visual artwork that interacts with the written words. We’ve linked a Scholastic article that takes this process step-by-step to lead you into creating beautiful works of written and visual art. The artwork feature today is all offered with permission from Stacy Antoville, the art teacher cited in this article. For more exquisite student art, follow her class on Instagram @art_o_ville.

We want you to get up and moving every day during quarantine, so here’s an activity to incorporate with a daily walk. Grab a pen or pencil and notepad, or if you prefer use a notepad app. Take a walk, preferably a good long one. Write down at least 5 things you see, 3 things you do, and 1 thing you overhear. Draw a quick sketch of one thing you see. You may or may not actually decide to use this in a poem later. The point is to notice details. (Adapted from an activity offered by Erika Meitner, VQR Writers’ Conference, 2019).

There are numerous audio and downloadable poetry books at the Jefferson Madison Regional Library. Temporary library cards are available online during quarantine.

Our director, Mary Anna Dunn, will be offering an online poetry class through Charlottesville Parks and Recreation’s Adaptive Recreation Program later this summer. Details TBA.

Enrichment During Home Quarantine

April 28-29 Big Just Got Bigger

Grow Gummy Giants. Well, this certainly changes the meaning of “growing your own food.” All you need are your favorite gummies, glasses of clear water, and a spoon. For a similar experiment and other activities to try at home find a copy of The 101 Coolest Simple Science Experiments ( Rachel Miller, Holly Homer, and Jamie Harrington.  Page Street Publishers, 2016).

A Growing Girl. Speaking of growing out of control, that certainly was a problem for Alice. When she wasn’t growing smaller and smaller that is. You may have seen a movie or cartoon version, but have you ever sat down and read or listened to the book itself? As the saying goes, the book was better than the movie so chose your favorite device and enjoy:

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, audible. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, eBook.

Now Streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch. You may not get as tall as Alice, but still it’s a great idea to stretch those muscles, especially if you’ve been schooling online all day! Try these Simple Stretches or Wheelchair Yoga.

Enrichment Activities for Home Quarantine

April 25-27 Theme and Adventure Parks

Like Adventure Parks? This very cool activity from the Adventure Park at Virginia Beach will show you how to design your own adventure park.

How about a theme park? You can get some great ideas to get you started on creating your own theme park from Pinterest . Use what you have in your house and your own imagination to build a magnificent park.

Of course, every theme park has to have lots of roller coasters.

Home Quarantine Activities: Game Night

April 24

Sometimes all you need is a deck of playing cards, and you’re good to go for hours.

Just on this one site you can find 15 different card games. There are a variety of types of card games here, as well as games suited for different ages and for different numbers of players.

Not everyone can hold cards in their hands, so we’re providing a link to products that hold cards for players.

When you’ve run through all the card games you know, and you still are looking for something to do, it’s time to build a card house.

Here is a video that does the best job ever of explaining how, but we’d suggest leaving out the cinder block!

Now that you have the basics, you can do some utterly amazing things. Type card houses into images.google or YouTube to see some architectural wonders. You’re sure to be inspired, and when you are remember to take pictures of your creations and tag enrichmentalliance on Instagram.

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.

Quarantine Enrichment:Birds and Bird Nests.

April 19

Movement.

Go on a nest walk. Walk around your community, carefully looking for nests. The link to the left will give you some hints for looking. Follow the guidelines on the Cornell Nest Code of Conduct so you don’t disturb the nests, eggs, or fledglings. Take a camera if you have one. You can zoom in more, plus you may want some pictures for the final activity.

Art

You’re almost ready for the next activity, but you’re going to need a bird. We’re providing two sets of instructions for origami birds.

Origami Flying Bird. Recycle some gift wrap to make a bird with flapping wings. The instructions for this activity are presented in diagrams, with accompanying instructions detailed in words. There are fewer folds than the more common origami crane, so if you have found that one frustrating, you might like this one better.

Origami Flapping Bird. People who benefit from a “step-by-step side-by-side” style of instruction might really appreciate this wikiHow, which offers both written instructions and short videos.

Science

Make like a bird and build a nest. Now you are finally ready to make your own nest. The instructions say to make it big enough for at least one “egg” but let’s try making one big enough for your origami bird to warm that egg.

Take some pictures and take enrichmentalliance.