What I am doing with my kids during our "quarantine"

My kids are not in quarantine but school has been cancelled.

Day 1

This is a day by day (hopefully) guide of what I am doing with my kids to reduce anxiety, and promote their physical and emotional well-being.

Since I had some cooking to do and didn’t really feel like dealing with the erratic weather, today we stayed inside, but since I still wanted them to get some exercise, we incorporated some physical activity that wouldn't break the house, at home.

I have to point out here, that my kids, ages 10, 8 and 5 are super psyched to be home and completely unconcerned otherwise. Before school was cancelled my ten-year-old told me he was too nervous to go to school but that was a thinly veiled manipulative tactic to try and convince me to let him stay home.

Here’s what we are doing:

1. We started off with some yoga-like "sitting with it" where we concentrated on being mindful of where we feel pain or discomfort in our bodies. Being mindful of both physical and emotional pain is a very important skill, that could always use some practice. They enjoyed trying to "get in touch with their feelings." This was also a good way to relax and get them in the right mindset. My ten year old wasn't interested in participating.

Then, they colored a picture of a body, each with their own color, pinpointing where in our bodies we normally feel stressed, that way if they begin to feel stressed, they can understand what it means. “My belly hurts, maybe it’s because I am stressed.”

2. After they finished their pictures they had a healthy snack (water, cut up veggies and cut up fruit)

3. Then we did another Mindful Kids (50 mindfulness activities for Kindness, Focus and Calm) cards. These cards are appropriate for ages 4and up. And they are super fun. I have used them in groups with kids, with my kids and with my therapy patients, kids and adolescents. They are usually a huge hit. Here’s the amazon link - mindful kids

In this one they wrote or colored what they are thankful for:

This one was dictated to me by my almost 5 year old and he told me what to color so he could color it in.

4. Then we watched a great Yoga for kids video – there are tons of videos out there but this is the one we are doing today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td6zFtZPkJ4

Although this only took about an hour, it was a great interlude in the middle of watching TV and before play-dates.

I think tomorrow we will have to include some educational activities.