5 Ways to Keep Your Kids Entertained During a Pandemic

Keeping your kids entertained during a pandemic is likely one of the most difficult feats you've ever set out to accomplish. With public pools, gyms, playgrounds, and sporting facilities closed and a stack of work-from-home papers you need to get through, it might feel like your only option is to sit your children in front of the TV and call it a day.

However, you don't have to give up. Of course, a bit of TV a day is good and healthy, but there are other activities you can do with your children that will keep them happy and occupied--not to mention safe from the pandemic. Here are just five to get you started.

1. Go for a Swim

There are a lot of ways to get your children swimming on hot days, despite the closure of public pools. If your kids are really young, a small inflatable pool is perfect; give them a couple of toys and they'll spend all day laughing and splashing in the shallow water. However, if you live in a city where it's warm all year round, you might consider an inground pool. Look up inground pools in Las Vegas, San Diego, Jacksonville, or other warm areas of the country to find easy and affordable ways to build an inground pool in your own backyard and provide your children with all-season entertainment. Just make sure your children have adult supervision at all times--even if they can swim.

2. Bake a Cake

It's easier than you might think to bake with your children and get them excited about helping in the kitchen. No matter how young they are, they can dump a cup of flour in a bowl or use a mixing spoon, and they'll love doing it. Baking a cake, cookies, or brownies with your children will be a time-consuming, enjoyable, and exciting activity that's just as fun to do as it is to eat. Plus, kids will love decorating their treats with bright-colored icings and sprinkles. Just be ready to clean up a mess.

3. Go on a Nature Hunt

What's better than an activity that combines getting outside and hunting for treasure? Your own backyard probably offers more than enough stones, leaves, branches, bugs, and trees to make up an interesting and challenging scavenger hunt that will keep your kids busy for hours. Create a list of things for them to find and then release them into the wilderness. Of course, have an exciting prize for them at the end. There are few things children won't do for a good prize.

4. Have a Picnic

Everyone knows it is way more fun to eat on a blanket on the ground than at at a chair at a table. Have your children help you pack up an easy picnic lunch--such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, carrots, chips, and cookies--and throw it in a picnic basket. Grab some napkins, a blanket, some jackets for the fall, and head outside; you can go to a nearby park or field, or just hang out in your own backyard. Your kids will be excited to get out and do something different, and food just tastes better at a picnic.

5. Do Some Art 

Get in touch with your artistic side and help your kids find theirs, too. The opportunities for arts and crafts are endless; there's painting, drawing, scrapbooking, magazine cutting, friendship bracelet making, and thousands more. Put on some music and let your kids go to work. Not only will they have a good time, but they'll have a piece of artwork to be proud of at the end of the day and you'll have something to hang on the fridge.

The pandemic has taken away lots of the things you're usually able to do with your kids, which can make it difficult to keep them occupied, entertained, and happy. However, with a few of these hacks, you won't have to worry; using the outdoors, some food, and some creative thinking, your kids won't even miss the playground.