Making Time for Family Fun During the Quarantine

By Melissa T. Shultz

Making Time for Family Fun During the Quarantine

By Melissa T. Shultz

Published on May 4, 2020

We asked our Paying for College 101 Facebook Group to share how their families have made some of the darkness of the quarantine a little brighter.

Here are the highlights (edited for clarity and length), along with some related links we added so you too can try these at home…

Being Creative During a Quarantine

My son and I did a virtual escape room today–it’s based on Sherlock Holmes. When you first pay you have to wait a few minutes for them to send the instructions via email. If you play on multiple devices, each device gets different clues that have to be used together to unlock each part. We played on one device so we worked on each clue together. It took us 57 minutes. Nevada

We’re planning to do some Quarantine Olympics with toilet paper bowling, social distancing six feet (whoever marks off six feet from one object to the next wins), and fruit by the foot challenge… it should be ridiculously embarrassing. ????Karen

My senior son built a treehouse in the back. Stephanie

I helped my son sew a custom designed bag to fit on his bicycle, and we made bread for the first time. My husband and daughter are restoring an older four wheeler for her. They are stuck with us, but, so far, so good. Jennifer

We do a (virtual) family Olympics with our extended family. Each family is assigned the same task, for example: Make a COVID-19 song. We have 24 hours to complete the assignment. Each family sends in a video with the assignment and my niece makes them into a video. We have done 20 activities and have 10 different families! It’s neat to see everyone and how creative they are. Kathy

We did a family chocolate taste test. I figured we needed to see if we were really absorbing what we’ve learned by watching the Food Network constantly for the last six weeks. Truth be told, it was really fun. Everyone enjoyed it, which is rare when you have kids whose ages span eight years. I bought five bars from the grocery store. Only I knew which was which. We tasted the chocolates one bar at a time and made notes about what we tasted and liked/didn’t like. Then we each gave rankings and then added up the rankings to find the family winner. Karen

Mine painted a mural on the fence in our backyard while we drank wine and watched. ???? ????Jacquie

We visit a different metro park once a week and get ice cream on the way home. Deborah

My husband has been playing old school Dungeons and Dragons with paper and dice with my teenage boys. Cheryl

The kids painted the back bathroom, organized the garage, and we play board games, UNO, and Ping Pong! Maria

My daughters and I have been working on a project together. We are making t-shirt quilts. They have cut the panels out and are affixing the interfacing to the back. I trim them down to size with a rotary cutter and then sew in panels. When it’s time to put the batting and backing on, they help with that too. We are also spending evenings together watching movies. It took a stay at home order for them to realize it’s not so much fun to spend a LOT of time in your room LOL! Barbara

Painting a mural in my daughters room. Have a ways to go. Olivia

We cleaned out a storage room in our basement and turned it into a bedroom for one high school senior. She picked her own paint colors and she and her big sister painted it. They did a great job! Bought some new bedding 50% off. Gave her something to be excited about during the spring of cancellations in her life. Sandy

I created an escape room for my family. It took me about 10 days on and off putting it together and took them about one hour and 10 minutes to complete it. I used props, labyrinth, lemon juice messaging, dishwasher soap on the mirror, etc…. everything available at home. You can make it even better if you can order supplies. ????Vidya

Training a new puppy…not going so great. Kimberly

We’ve been having game night with my sister’s family with the help of Zoom—sometimes playing board games we both own and sometimes using Jackbox. We also all made PowerPoint presentations but had to present someone else’s sight unseen. That was pretty funny. Each week we also do a family pyramid where each family member is ranked based on their contributions and attitude for the week. The person doing the ranking is different each week. There is definite bias but it’s pretty funny. Amy