Thanks to the cold weather and shorter days, snuggling up on your couch and binge watching your favorite Netflix shows is even more tempting than usual. However, now more than ever it’s important to keep the family active and engaged while spending a greater part of our days indoors. We’ve come up with a few ideas to help you shake things up at home with a little family bonding.
Family Game Night
Whether you’re young or young at heart, a good old fashioned game night will bring the entire family together for a little fun and friendly competition. Not only that, board games can improve your strategic thinking too! If you don’t have physical board games, no problem, most games can now be found online or in the form of an app that you can download for free or for a low price. Want to play with friends and family outside of your household? Online games are great for socializing remotely. Check out our post, Host Your Own Virtual Game Night, for a list of our favorite virtual games.
If you prefer traditional, physical board games, you can count on Flipp to find some great games on sale at your favorite stores. Check out Family Dollar’s Toy Book for your dose of family-friendly games like Operation, Guess Who?, and tons more. For our friends in Canada, the Toys ‘R’ Us Toy Book is packed with deals on classics like Twister, Monopoly, and more.
Baking some delicious treats can be just as fun as eating them. This activity gets the kids in the kitchen to learn, while the adults teach and create some delicious quality family time. Feeling the spirit of competition? Have a bake off between siblings or have parent-child teams. The winners can sit back while the losing team cleans up the mess!
Missing those dinners out? Turn another regular dinner into an extravagant restaurant experience, where it’s VIP treatment all the way! Here’s how to do it in just a few easy steps.
- Select a theme that can run through the entire night and inspire the other elements of your at-home dining experience.
- To really give it a restaurant feel, print or write out some menus that detail each course and of course, place cards for each of your guests.
- Make sure you set the ambience. Music is key! Many of the best restaurants have specially curated playlists to help create the perfect atmosphere for guests, and you should too. Luckily you have an abundance of choice on Youtube to make things easier.
- Now that you have your music in place, you need to match it with those special table linens and cutlery.
- Put on the outfit that makes you feel your best, even if you are at home. When you look the part, your ‘home restaurant’ will feel the part.
Release your inner Bill Nye with some pretty cool science experiments using basic household items. One of our favorites is slime making! All you really need is four ingredients, and some optional add-ons. Check out our Instagram video for DIY Witch Slime that we made for Halloween. You can adjust the theme with whatever colors and add-ons you choose.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups shaving cream
- ½ cup white school glue
- 1 ½ – 2 tablespoons contact saline solution, more as needed
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- Food coloring (optional)
- Glitter (optional)
Steps:
- Combine shaving cream, glue, and food coloring (if desired) to a bowl and stir until combined. Then mix in baking soda.
- Add 1 ½ tablespoons of saline solution and mix until combined. If it’s too sticky, add more solution ½ a tablespoon at a time.
(Texture tip: If you add more saline, your slime will be thicker. Less will make it slimier.) - Knead the slime with your hands, and add glitter if desired. It’ll be wet and gooey at first but will hold together the more you knead. You can add a bit more saline solution at this stage if the texture is still too sticky.
- Time to play!
- Once you’re done, it’s best to store the slime in a container with a lid or in a zip lock bag.
If you want to burn off your kids excess energy, there are really simple ways to integrate exercise into any day. YouTube is filled with free online classes like yoga, zumba, or even salsa dance lessons! Another idea for getting some movement into your day is to learn a dance routine from a Tik Tok video. There are lots of dances that feature the whole family trying to (properly) bust a move. Who knows, if you’re really good and a little innovative, you can even go viral!
Karaoke is a fan favorite because it gives everyone the chance to be a rock star. If you don’t actually have a microphone or the setup for it, the easiest way to do this is to look up the name of a song plus the word “karaoke” on YouTube. For the mic, use a brush or even a cooking spoon as a prop to be the singer you’ve always dreamed you could be—even if it’s just for just one song. The best part? No waiting in a long line to get to your song. Just let loose and have a good time.
And there you have it! Whether it’s one of the activities above or something entirely different, we hope you embrace more indoor activities to come out better, stronger, or smarter on the other side.
