Health and Wellness

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Why It’s Important to Show Children Your Grownup Emotions—Especially Now

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Lately, we’re feeling all the feelings. There’s nothing like a global pandemic to bring out all kinds of emotions—the anxiety of not knowing what’s coming, the sadness of missing our loved ones, the irritability that comes from staying home with our families all the time—and emotions are tricky, complicated things. Add in our kiddos, and it feels more like a constant struggle.

Parents and caregivers: We see you. This is a tough time to say the least, and we’re all struggling to figure out the best ways to handle our emotions—especially around the children in our lives.

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At Home Activity: Shadow Play

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At Chicago Children’s Museum, one of our favorite things about play is that you really don’t need much to make it happen.

Today’s at home activity shows how a sheet, a lamp, and a flashlight can make for hours of fun—plus fine and gross motor development.

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Growing Gratitude

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Whether it’s for an aunt or the next-door neighbor, parent, or community helper—take time to create a thank you card or sign for healthcare providers, mail carriers, grocery store employees, or anyone else deserving of gratitude, inside or outside of your household. Your kids will work on their literacy and creative skills, plus you’ll be teaching them the power of gratitude.

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At Home Activity: Puppet Parade

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Let’s throw a parade in our honor. We deserve it, don’t we? The homeschooling, the working from home, the socially distant Zoom birthday parties, and constant hand washing—we are all something to celebrate.

Trouble is, who do we celebrate with?

Today’s at home activity is all about making your own crowd. Gather some puppets, stuffies, and toys— and throw yourselves a parade.

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At Home Activity: Marionette Play

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By taking a familiar toy or stuffy (one with limbs that move easily) and turning it into a marionette, your little ones will have a whole new way to play. They’ll work on their hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, plus their sense of self expression and creativity will come alive.

So grab a flexible toy and some string and let your littles be the puppeteers.

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At Home Activity: Cereal Box Guitars

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What do Raisin Bran and rock ‘n’ roll have in common?

Find out with today's at home activity, Cereal Box Guitars. Not only will your kid end up with a sweet new axe, they’ll learn the relationship between vibration and sound, and investigate what makes pitch.

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At Home Activity: Tabletop Bubbleologist

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What’s a bubbleologist, you ask?

Simply put, a bubbleologist is an expert in all things bubbles—and kids are natural bubbleologists.

Today’s at home activity takes bubbles to a whole new level. Not only do the activities below allow your little ones to play with bubbles (which is obviously a blast), they’re designed to build important skills like trial and error and cause and effect. Plus, by following the directions below, kids explore geometry and shape-building, physical properties, and their own creativity.

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At Home Activity: Window Garden

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Does your little one have a tiny green thumb?

Today’s at home activity is the perfect way to find out.

You may not know this (many of us certainly didn’t), but remember those dried beans hiding in your cabinet or pantry? You can actually plant one of those beans and watch it sprout into a plant!

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Working from Home Parents: We See You, We Hear You, We Love You

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Work-life balance has gotten, well, pretty interesting these days. Many of Chicago Children’s Museum’s staff are also parents, so we have a pretty good idea of how tricky it can be to keep up with our work tasks with little ones running around.

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At Home Activity: 2-Square to the Rescue

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In the midst of a global pandemic, one must find a glimmer of happiness wherever it may emerge. For me, it comes in the form of four specific words from my 9-year-old daughter, often uttered with colossal enthusiasm:

“LET’S PLAY 2-SQUARE!”

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At Home Activity: DIY Constellations

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During all this social distancing, our worlds have gotten much smaller—our morning coffee, dinner dates, family outings, staff meetings, workouts, and children’s educations all take place in the same spot: our homes.

And as much as our lives have changed, so have our children’s lives, especially if they’re school-aged.

But what if we told you that, in the height of the Coronavirus quarantine, you can make your world seem as big as outer space?

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At Home Activity: Animal Tracks

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Since the days of just sending our little ones outside to play with the neighbors are at a halt for now, today’s at home activity focuses on something you can do with your littles outside: search for animal tracks!

This guided activity lets you and your little ones tap into your Discovery Channel sensibilities. Exploring the mud (or dare we even mention it this late in the year, snow!) is a great way to pique your children’s curiosities about animals, nature, and biology. Plus, you might learn a few things along the way.

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At Home Activity: Breathing in Memory

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… the scent of smell, also known as the olfactory sense, is powerful. In fact, it’s the scent most attributed to memory formation—which is why a smell may trigger an intense, vivid memory, sometimes out of the blue.

Smell is also deeply connected to emotion—our brains form strong connections between particular scents and powerful emotions, which is why smelling something can feel so suddenly intense.

What does this have to do with your kids, or parenting, or play? Well, we’re bringing you an at home activity that is all about how you can explore this powerful (and often overlooked) sense with your kids in the comfort of your own home (while reinforcing and building literacy skills).

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At Home Activity: Estimation Games

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This time of uncertainty might be the perfect time to explore one of math’s most kid-friendly concepts: estimation.

Practicing estimation skills with your kids is a great way to infuse math learning and play. With activities like the one below, children will begin to understand spatial reasoning in terms of height, weight, and length, and they’ll also start sharpening their educated guessing skills.

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At Home Activity: The Element of Surprise

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Today we’re sharing an activity that is all about how you and your littles can take the most familiar objects around you and turn them into something brand new. And since we’re all about quality play at Chicago Children’s Museum (that’s also a blast)—today’s activity also allows your kids to flex their imagination and literacy skills at the same time.

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Social Distancing, COVID-19, Shelter in Place: How Do We Explain it All to Our Kids?

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We keep hearing it and thinking it over and over again: these are unprecedented times—and they are. But despite the quiet air of social distancing across our neighborhoods and towns, there’s also quite a bit of noise—24-hour news channels, Twitter feeds, daily press conferences, and more.

We’re here to summarize some of that noise for you! And to round-up some quality links that we know you can trust.