Explore hundreds of ideas to engage your kids so that you CAN work-from-home. Search our crowd-sourced activity list by age, screens, parental involvement, and more. Read articles on what you need to know to survive quarantine with kids.
This’s timely and just exactly what many parents need right now, including me with a preschooler. Just a suggestion that it might be more helpful if these resources can be upvoted by users to surface the more popular ones; kinda like PH but probably it’s already in the works? 😊 Great work and thank you guys!
@galennyc Thanks for your suggestion and kind words! The ability to upvote activities and allow users to provide feedback is definitely on our short list.
@galennyc@michlegere That's an awesome idea. We should definitely look into this.
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I have a 1-year-old at home and feel like I'm in the target group.
Checked out the resource. Baking with the 1-year-old? Do you mean creating a disaster in the kitchen with your kid together? Canvas art? Bubble blowing? (that actually works as well as many other things while you 100% engaged in the process, but the resource promises an ability to focus on something else?!)
Some of the advice are kind-of workable, but most of them are totally irrelevant to 1-2yo toddlers!
@dinobot Hi Danil, that's really great feedback. Did you try filtering by age 1-2 and no parent involvement required? That might help. We definitely need more in this category though.
This is a massive problem that millions of families are facing. Happy to answer questions on ways we all need to work together to support parents in quarantine, or about how this project came together
As a Product Manager and mom of 3 tweens, I lived “The Ultimate Guide to Working from Home with Kids” while we built the website and expanded its content. Many of the articles resonated with me and helped my family overcome some of the challenges we currently face.
With the continued support of our partners, childhood education experts, and parents, we look forward to building a community and sharing additional content and resources with you all.
@michlegere You've done such an extraordinary job building this Michelle. Thank you for being so critical to developing this vital resource for families.
As a current student, it's so easy to fall behind on schoolwork and curriculum when trying to learn from home. So I know that parents right now are absolute superheroes for keeping their kids educated and engaged while balancing their WFH lifestyles. I'm glad I got to be a part of this!
This looks great. We have a 5-year-old and 1-year-old. We have been homeschooling the 5yo since March. It's a challenge for sure, especially since the kids don't have any real social contact. Online learning only goes so far. There is no real substitute for human connection.
@kaigradert I completely agree with your statements; there is no real substitute for human connection.
As a stopgap, have you tried virtual playdates for your 5yo? We published a Virtual Playdate guide that offers tips (https://www.enrichmentactivities...).
@michlegere Oh yes. We do daily Arts & Crafts with two other families and their kids. And we do unstructured calls where the 5yo (just) hangs and talks with other kids. At times they video chat for two hours. It's incredible to see them adopt new technology. All that said, it's unnatural for kids that young not to have real human contact.
In early March, our entire education and childcare system changed overnight. Families were mandated to keep their children at home, follow remote learning plans and simultaneously continue their full-time jobs remotely with no preparation and little guidance. As an educator with expertise in homeschooling, families began approaching me to ask how they could possibly juggle a full-time job, full-time childcare and remote schooling, while also dealing with the stress this new situation this was causing them and their children. While I wasn't sure how this could be accomplished, I knew it was something many brilliant homeschoolers had found a way to achieve with time and patience. I decided to reach out to the homeschooling and parenting community to see if I could find a way to help families get a little more balance back in their lives.
I posted in a couple online parenting groups asking for ideas for activities to keep kids busy while parents were working from home. I received nearly 2,000 suggestions! So, then I started using a survey that was linked to a google spreadsheet so I could collect all the ideas in one place....
Pretty soon, the spreadsheet was crashing from nearly 3,000 visits a day. People started suggesting different ways to filter the information, like ages, level of parent involvement required, indoor or outdoors, screens or none.
So, I teamed up with Product Manager and supermom @michlegere, found four volunteer developers @neve_foresti , @kevinkennis and @joanna_anderson and @tammy_gu - and we built a curated directory of activities for kids to do while parents are working.
To help give families more nuanced support, we asked amazing volunteer writers and organizations with expertise in homeschooling and childhood education to develop in-depth guides to help parents navigate these waters for the first time (Modulo.app , Schoolclosures.org, Promise Venture Studios, Wonderschool, and Foublie). A special thank you to @melissa_iftimie and @8ennett and @lesleyk for sharing your talent with this cause! And to the incredible @rebecca_fu for generously taking time out from her demanding life as a college student at Cornell to help us develop a social media presence.
@ericries has been a huge support from the start as a product expert and parent, coming up the with the idea of developing a truly comprehensive resource to support families and advising us on the development of the product every step the way.
Here are a few of the comments we’ve received from parents so far:
“This is so beyond. You are unreal and I’m so deeply grateful. I almost started crying. This is so incredibly helpful for parents with kids spread apart in ages. It just makes it so easy. I can’t imagine the work you put into this. It’s so humbling...THANK YOU!”
“Works like a dream! I have a 2 and 3 year and I’m running out of things to do so I’ll totally be using this”
“You are incredible! This is a DREAM!”
“I am so impressed that you turned your spreadsheet into this website! So awesome!”
"I checked out the code spark app for my boys. They are 4 and 5, so for their tech time today I have them exploring with that app. 🤞🏽🤞🏽 so far so good.”
“I love people like you who just get it done. Thank you!”
“this is freaking amazing - thank you!”
We are actively seeking feedback to help make this guide more helpful to families. It is constantly evolving as the crisis unfolds. Please take a look at the website, let us know what you think and if you have any suggestions. Also, we're always looking for volunteer writers, so if you want to write a blog and get your name out there writing about a cool activity or issues relevant to working from home with kids, let us know!
Last but not least, make sure to add your favorite activity for working from home with kids so other families can benefit from your knowledge and creativity!
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