Usually, I write a post every month featuring about a dozen of the most interesting family-friendly events happening around Orange County. Since we’re under quarantine right now with no end in sight and only essential workers are allowed to be out and about (and thank goodness for these heroes!), there’s literally nothing scheduled for kids to do outside their home.
With spring break coming up in April for many Orange County school districts, I thought it’d be helpful to compile a list of fun activities – both virtual and physical – that you can do during this time. Even if your school district has already had spring break (whatever that looked like under quarantine), these ideas can still help you come up with something fun for your kiddos to do when you’ve got extra time to fill.
And I’m guessing you’ve got a lot of time to fill.
My son’s school has been amazing about providing online educational content for him to complete during the week, along with daily zoom calls with his teacher and class. And there’s a plethora of great resources online now with free educational activities, videos, printables etc.
So I’m going to focus this list primarily on fun things you can do together as a family or for your kids to do solo. Some may have educational aspects, but overall they’re meant to be entertaining. Because your kids have probably been working hard on their loaner chromebooks doing perhaps more schoolwork than they’ve ever had to do at home before.
They need a break from learning too.
They may also need a break from screen time. So I’m dividing the list up into physical activities and virtual activities to help you sort through them easier. This is by no means a comprehensive list; But I’ve done my best to find fun and interesting things you can do together this Spring Break at home with kids (or on a weekend, or whenever you want really). And of course, though some of these ideas involve nature and being outside, please be smart and safe about social distancing when venturing beyond your home.
Physical Things To Do This Spring Break At Home:
Easter Egg Printables and Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt
With Easter coming up, we here at the OC Mom Collective wanted to think up something fun your kiddos could do if the Easter Bunny can’t come to your house or you don’t have the supplies to do an easter egg hunt at home. So we’ve created this set of printable easter eggs which they can color and hang in your window facing the street. Send this to your neighbors with kids and encourage them to do the same. Then you can go for a family walk Easter weekend and see how many different colored eggs you can spot!
As an added bonus, we’re giving away a $100 Target gift card to one lucky participant! Click here for all the details and to download the printable Easter egg coloring pages.
Hide The Afikomen (Or Anything Really)
If you celebrate Passover, or even if you don’t, this is an easy and fun activity you can do at home with very little prep. In Jewish tradition, during the annual Passover sedar dinner a piece of unleavened bread called matzo (looks like a cracker) is wrapped and hidden somewhere in the house for the children to find. According to some traditions, the child who finds it wins a prize. When we’ve done this in my house, the prize has just been to eat the matzo and for the glory. In our house, victory tastes sweet.
If you don’t have matzo or a cracker or don’t celebrate this holiday from the Old Testament, try hiding something else. It can be a present. It can be money. It can even be a box. The fun is in your child trying to find it, and in how clever mom or dad can be in hiding it. : )
Celebrate Jackie Robinson Day
Did you know that April 15th is not just tax day? (Or at least it used to be before the due date got pushed back to July 15th). It’s also Jackie Robinson Day! If you’ve got a baseball fan at home, why not celebrate this with some fun baseball-themed activities? The season may be postponed, but your enjoyment of the sport doesn’t have to be.
Traditionally, this day is marked by wearing #42, Jackie’s shirt number. If you don’t have one of his jerseys already, create one! Take a blank shirt and some fabric markers and have your kids go to town designing it. Or, for a more low-pro way, take some masking tape and create the number on the back of a shirt (in blue and white if you can, since those are his team colors).
Then go out and play some baseball together if you have access to a park where you can still practice social distancing from others. If you can’t, and to infuse some basic math into the activity, challenge your child to find 42 of the same item in the house or 42 of the same color in the house!
Get Moving At Home Challenge
The American Heart Association has created this fun graphic of 25 ways you can get moving at home. Now, if you’ve got an exercise-adverse kiddo at home like my son, who hates walking but will jump on a trampoline for hours if you let him, it may be difficult to get your kiddos to do these without extra motivation.
Why not make it a challenge – can they do all the activities in one day? Or if that’s too much, break it up into a few per day during the week of Spring Break at home? If they need reward motivation, make it something that’s not a physical prize (in the interest of social distancing so you don’t have to go to a store or get an extra package delivery). Maybe it’s extra snuggle time with you, or they get to pick what’s for dinner, or stay up past their bedtime, or even earn extra screen time.
Celebrate Earth Day This Spring Break At Home
Celebrate Spring Break at home with kids and Earth Day at the same time! Here are some ideas for ways that you can Reduce, Reuse, Recycle for fun with kids:
- Create butterfly wings from an old cardboard box
- Make an earth goddess flower crown using this easy tutorial from Eco Friendly Mama
- Upcycle broken crayons into fun shapes
- Take the Discovery Science Center’s Eco Challenge using this printable booklet that includes info on how to start your own compost, recycling tips and more!
- Click here for more ideas of all natural crafts and activities you can do at or around your home
Go On An Imaginary Trip This Spring Break At Home
Perhaps you had an awesome trip planned for Spring Break that you had to cancel due to the global pandemic (like I did). That sucks. No doubt about it. But to look at the silver lining, it’s much easier to travel somewhere in your imagination and from the comfort of your own home. Here are some ideas for transporting yourself and your family to a fun destination:
- Make an airplane or car ride out of couch pillows.
- Cook a meal inspired by the Spring Break destination of your dreams.
- Play music from that place to set the mood.
- Draw a landmark you would’ve seen on the trip.
- Dress like someone from this place (of course this works better if it’s somewhere far flung, but you can still have fun dressing up in different clothes for a more local destination).
- Pose for silly photos with the drawings in the background and pretend you’re there seeing them in real life.
- Print the photos out as mementos of your imaginary Spring Break trip or send them as postcards to loved ones.
Create A Time Capsule
How many of us remember making a time capsule growing up? I know I do! I remember making a time-capsule when I was in the sixth grade. The whole idea was that my sixth-grade teacher was going to give us our time capsules when we graduated. Pretty cool idea right?!
So, what better way to capture this time – which hopefully will never happen again – than by making a really cool time capsule? Click here for ideas of what to put in it!
Host Your Own Backyard Olympics
Just because the 2020 Olympics have been cancelled doesn’t mean you can’t have your own version of them this Spring Break at home. Check out this post with ideas for fun ways to instill some healthy competition between your quarantine cohorts. If you don’t have a big enough outdoor space (or any outdoor space at all), you’ll probably want to modify the ones involving water, but there are still some great ideas here that can be done inside.
More Ideas For Physical Things To Do This Spring Break At Home:
- Go on a themed scavenger hunt indoors
- Do one of the 100 Bear Grylls’ indoor survival challenges
- Go on an alphabet scavenger hunt outdoors
- Pick flowers and glue them to a glass jar
Virtual Things To Do This Spring Break At Home With Kids:
- View the live webcams at the Aquarium Of The Pacific. They’ve got penguins (both above and below water), sharks, sea jellies and more! Or click here to see video of penguins meeting other inhabitants for the first time at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.
- View the live webcams at the San Diego Zoo. They’ve got baboons, koalas, giraffes, elephants, tigers, and more!
- Missing the Disneyland Resort like we are? Click here for virtual ride videos. (Actually this is for Disney World in Florida, but many of the rides are the same, and why not pretend you’re visiting there anyway since it costs nothing to “travel” virtually!)
- Visit 12 of the greatest museums in the world…from your couch!
- Take a free art class for fun via Fibo Kids Art Academy.
- Click here for more virtual field trip ideas.
Have another idea for a fun virtual or physical activity that can be done over Spring Break at home with kids? Let us know in the comments below!
