My Quarantine Chronicles - Week 3

As we struggle in quarantine with working from home, schooling our kids and keeping the littles occupied, I am sharing some of our weekly activities to help other parents with simple ideas to make quarantine more manageable and maybe even have some fun! I try to plan at least one easy activity each day in the midst of it all - keyword being simple. There's not a lot of time or resources for elaborate activities these days! See the round-up at the end of this post for the quick cheat sheet.

Quarantine Week 3

A loves baking and helping clean (I'm pretty happy about that too). We made the simplest chocolate chip cookies which surprisingly tasted good as well. See the end of this post for the recipe.

A also learned to  load the dishwasher this week! Finding chores he can help with keeps him happily busy and even helps us out a bit.

It's still pretty cold here but we got out once to hike to our little stream, which A asks to go to every day, so it was exciting to finally say yes. It started raining hard shortly after we got there though so we had to run back in the freezing rain! The funny thing about going is that we squeeze through a hole someone cut in our back fence so it feels quite adventurous. 

 

We also started tele-speech therapy this week. A's therapist sent lots of fun activities in the mail which will give us more to do while we're in quarantine. One of our favorites was a simple printout of cars on a page that we lined up his toy cars on and raced them to a finish line we marked with tape on the other side of the room. This was so much fun and gave us an opportunity to practice all kinds of words. D even played this with A which allowed me to squeeze in some work hours! 

• Baking - I actually love baking but it's definitely more work with a preschooler, so as an activity I try to keep it as simple as possible. See my favorite minimal ingredient go-to recipe below
• Make an obstacle course with ordinary objects. Coming up with the ideas required a little bit of thought so here is ours to make it quick and easy for you:

Jump across throw pillows - crawl through a blanket tunnel - fill a small basket with cards (or anything small) - walk with the basket on your head to a second larger basket - dump the cards in the second basket - step on on a stool and jump off - sweep up paper bits - dump into a container - stack rolls of toilet paper (or blocks or anything stack-able). You can make this extra fun and exciting by timing the run through and rewarding with a treat.

• Chores -  My little guy LOVES to help with everything and anything so giving him a "chore" is fun. My older one, not so much, but chores keep him busy too! I often let my little guy have a spray bottle with water and a cloth and he can go "clean" anything he wants. Things get soaked and I have to help him finish up after a bit but it keeps him happily occupied.
• Take a walk. If you have water in walking distance our favorite activity is throwing rocks into the water.
• Make your own race mat. The one we used are copyrighted so I can't share here but you can make your own by simply drawing some cars (making it a more interactive activity) on a piece of paper, line up your cars and race to the finish line. (You can also google for printable downloads)
• Simple scavenger hunts. We do these indoors and outdoors. Have your little one find everyday objects. The last time we did this we pretended that his toy bunny was going to build a house and A had to go find what the bunny needed (leaves, a flower, some sticks, some rocks etc.)

Shortbread Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup butter

½ cup sugar

¾ cup chocolate chips

1 teaspoon vanilla

In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add vanilla. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients. Roll or scoop dough into balls. Flatten cookies slightly. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, at 300 until light golden brown. 

Until next week.. stay safe!