Below you will find practical activities and strategies that you could try out as routines within your household schedules. They are organized into weekly schedules themselves which allows you to try out a new activity or strategy each day of the week. Just click on the slideshow. They are grouped under different themes and purposes. You will find that some of them are useful and some of them are not; what might work for some households, may not work for others. As you experiment with the activities and strategies, pay attention to those that seemed to resonate and fit with you, your children, and for your household. These can become part of your parenting tool kit.

The themes of activities and strategies to explore are:

Being Together- (activities for the whole household to feel connected through new experiences together)

Self-Care & Caregiving- (activities to inspire caregivers to plan time for themselves and feel rejuvenated)

Calm & Quiet- (strategies to practice that can help children feel calm and relaxed)

Feeling Engaged- (activities that encourage short and quick bursts of physical activity)

Compassion Action- (some activities to make our worlds and the worlds of others just a little bit brighter)

Meal Time Questions- (conversation starter ideas for while you eat)

Being Together

Time together? But we're always together right now! Yes, it is true. This routine is to purposefully bring the household together each day to share in new experiences. Being able to share new experiences can give us an opportunity to interact with one another in a different way than the regular day to day interactions. And considering that socializing currently means we have to go online to do so, this helps us to continue feeling social offline. These activities could give your household something to look forward to as an evening activity (or any other time of the day that makes sense for you!). There is no rush with some of these activities, so you can always continue an activity into the next day. Click on the slideshows below.

Self-Care & Caregiving

As a caregiver, it can be quite natural to make sure everyone is taken care of first without even thinking about ourselves. What is just as important is to ask "What about me?" and "When do I get some me time?" You can ask these questions without feeling selfish! What is important for us to remember is that the time we take to care for ourselves helps us to feel new energy which can strengthen the quality of care we give. We can feel less frustrated, more calm, feel a little bit more patient, and laugh at things that might otherwise makes us angry. Here are some ideas to help you rejuvenate, reconnect and enjoy reclaiming time for yourself. Click on the slideshows below.

Calm & Quiet

Even after severe storms, nature finds a sense of stillness to help return to balance. These short activities and strategies can give us, too, ways that we can feel calm and relaxed to help balance our well-being. Try adding these during transition times going from one of your routines to another. For instance, before you begin school work time, try adding these activities to lead you into school work time. Or add these at the end of screen time. You might try the daily activity a couple times throughout the day to give everyone a chance to get a feel for it. Pay attention to which activities were helpful as not every strategy will work for every child. Learn the ones that do work and add them to your parenting tool kit. Click on the slideshows below.

Feeling Engaged

When there is so much research and evidence that show the impact of physical activity on our health, it feels quite counter-intuitive to be asked to stay home for such long periods of time. When we reduce our physical activity it can eventually take a toll on our moods and impact how we connect with our world. But we don't have to wait til the pandemic is over to make sure we feel engaged and alive! These short activities can help shake the cobwebs off our bodies and help us increase our energy and get the blood pumping through our veins. They can help us continue to feel engaged throughout the day. Find a space in your household big enough for everyone to move (there's always outside too!). Click on the slideshows below.

"We are alive when we are physically moving." --Stuart Brown

Compassion Action

Compassion, in the simplest terms, is about understanding the suffering of another person. At this unique time, we know that social distancing and stay at home guidelines have drastically altered so many people's lives- and increased our suffering in ways we didn't before. How we treat one another can have the effect of increasing suffering on others or to uplift them from it. The small actions we take toward others, we also take toward ourselves. These activities allow us to give pause and think about how we might be able to take action to show compassion toward others and make their world just a little brighter- for the day or even just a moment. It asks us to be a little more gentle with ourselves and with others, and this practice takes patience, Patience is something we all have, it is just like a muscle that needs to be exercised to grow stronger. Click on the slideshows below.

Meal Time Questions

Sharing a meal together is an opportunity to connect as a family and household. Conversations throughout a meal can inspire that connection by allowing us to learn more about how each one of us feels about and sees the world. A helpful way to inspire conversation is to have one question for the meal that everyone has a turn to answer. Questions can be answered by everyone (even 2 year olds!). Add these questions to one of your daily meals in your routine. It can feel awkward at first but with on-going practice it can feel like a regular part of your meal.

The questions can be thoughtful, they can be serious, they can be funny, they can be a little silly, or they can have something to do with what happened during the day. Questions can be asked at the beginning of the meal and everyone shares answers as you enjoy eating the meal. Feel free to create your own questions! Click on the slideshows below.