If you are have the privilege to self-isolate and keep your kids at home with you during the next few weeks, we know you love them but it’s going to be a rough couple of weeks.
Your Modern Mississauga Mom (me!) came up with some ideas so you don’t go too crazy, especially with the younger kids who need more direction and monitoring:

• Build a good ol’ fort! Get some blankets and sheets, rearrange some furniture and have the kids build a fort. Maybe prepare some snacks and eat it in the Fort! Read a couple books and maybe even try to watch a movie while in the fort
  
  Activity time: about 1-2 hours of activity time without a movie. 2-4 hours with a movie. Age suitability: 3+

• If you have a backyard or can go to the park, look for bugs and insects in the soil. Investigate the different types of specimen outside. Put them in a plastic bowl and release back to the wild.
  
  Activity time about 30 minutes to one hour. Age suitability: 2+

• Go through your pantry and closets. Get your kids to sort items with you and throw out expired goods or things you don’t need anymore. You can group stuff by “like” items. What an awesome time to think about giving back to the community (The Compass?) and also spring cleaning! This is the last week of winter, after all.
  
  Activity time about 2-3 hours. Age suitability: 4+

• If you have paper, glue/ tape and scissors you can cut out a village and make houses, stores, cars and set them up on the floor or table. Colour in each of the landmarks, create roads and connect each person’s village.
  
  Activity time: 2-3 hours. Age suitability: 5+

• This is a great time to teach your kids about how to be helpers in the community and awareness of news during times of crisis. It’s so important to lead by example and not freak out when uncertain times are ahead. Don’t keep updating them on every little thing since so many changes are happening and it may seem like impending doom to kids (heck, it even seems that way for us). Just let them know things are constantly changing but one thing that doesn’t change: we are all in this together. Also teaching them good phone etiquette could go a long way.
  
  Activity time: 30 minutes to call 2-3 small businesses. Age suitability: 4+.

• Bake something. There are tons of recipes online. Sites like recipeland.com and supercook.com allow you to put in the ingredients you already have at home (if you’re unable to go to the store) and will find recipes you can cook. I always have ingredients for pancakes so I will premeasure the harder ingredients and put everything out for my son mise en place. He loves pouring and mixing everything. I teach him about oven safety and the importance of cooking with an adult. He gets to put on toppings, syrup or chocolate.
  
  Activity time: 1 hour. Age suitability: 4+

• This one kind of tied into the previous activity: Support local businesses. Do a little search. Call your favourite local businesses and see what you can do to help. Have your kids pick up the phone and talk. It will teach them initiative and skills for talking on the phone. They can say “hello”, introduce themselves and ask how can they help support the business at this time? I’ve listed some businesses below:

Beyond the Classroom Tutoring, South Mississauga is offering online tutoring for current students as well as new students. They use a secure and dedicated online tutoring platform, setting up a virtual room specific to student and tutor. They are good for if you want ongoing support for your child while schools are closed.

The Studio Paint Bar will be selling individual and family paint kits. You can paint on your own or tune into an online instructional class at designated times. You can order your kit and book your class at www.thestudiopaintbar.ca.

Mandi Galer will be hosting some Facebook Live events on their page, Sing Music Studio. They will also have online lessons and Kindermusik while shut down! www.singmusicstudio.com

A little less local but still fun are these virtual museum tours.

Scholastic’s Learn At Home site has 20 days worth of activities, stories, videos and articles. Www.scholastic.com/learnathome

Don’t forget that we can all lead by example and show our kids some basic skills during a time of crisis. How do we come together as a community and in what ways can we help? When we look back at this, will our kids be proud of what they accomplished? Let’s remember we’re all in this together.