Reintroduce Play Time with These 5 Socially Distanced Games
From caution-taped playgrounds to social distancing rules and school closures, it’s been a hard year to have fun. At Together Families we are huge advocates for learning through play, but what are we meant to do when play feels impossible? We brainstormed, interviewed some of our favourite parents and came up with this list of responsible play ideas for kids who need a little fun in their lives.
Opening Night. Teach your kids this simplified version of charades. Have each participant write down their 3 favourite movies, books or people, just be sure to keep it to one category. Spread the names upside down on the floor and take turns going up to act out the words on your paper. If the game isn’t moving fast enough you can ask for a hint which can be any word as long as that hint isn’t the name on the paper. If someone gets frustrated or can’t guess the name, move on a choose a new paper. The game is over when all of the names have been guessed.
Skip-a-thon. Jump rope is a great safe activity because the rope automatically creates a danger zone around you which no one can enter. Create some fun challenges for the skippers like who can do 10 one-leg jumps in a row? Who can skip from one end of the park to the other? Who can invent the craziest skip and teach it to the group? Anything goes as long as everyone keeps their distance.
1, 2, Step. Create a hop scotch grid on the sidewalk with numbers 1-10. One at a time kids can go to the start of the grid and an adult will call out a basic math problem. The hopper then has to skip their way to the answer of that question. For example, if you ask what is 3+4? The hopper will make their way to the box that has a 7 in it. Let every kid go through and tailor the math questions to their personal math capabilities.
Carry a tune. One participant gets headphones and a device that plays music. They go up in front of the group and listen to a song but they don’t share what that song is with the group. The kid with the headphones in hums the song without saying any of the words. The louder they hum the funnier the performance is. When the song is done or the performer has run out of steam, everyone has a guess about what song they were listening to. Dancing is encouraged!
Whats my name again? Players stand in a circle 6 feet apart from each other. One player will introduce themselves and ask the name of someone across from them and gesture to that person. For example, “hi, my name is Sara, what’s your name?”. That 2nd player will then say hi back and introduce themselves, “hi Sara, my name is Joseph”. Keep going around the circle until everyone has been introduced. In the next round make up a brand new name for yourself. The next person calls you by your new name and introduces their new name until everyone has gone. Make the names increasingly more bizarre and start to use noises and actions instead of words. See how wild the names can get before everyone starts laughing and can’t remember the new names anymore.