Are you overwhelmed with ideas on the internet for how to entertain your kids at home? Inundated with emails from school? Flooded with tips and suggestions for fun? Then you probably shouldn’t keep reading. You should probably just set this aside, go pour yourself a drink or take a deep breath or give your kid a hug instead.

Because this whole post is just one big idea for entertaining your kids. But I’m putting it here to share - and to collect ideas (from texts with friends and from DMs on Insta). On the off chance that maybe - just maybe - it might be a teeny way to help YOU get through the day like it has helped me in the last week a half (which is like eons in coronavirus time).

The idea is called “Bag-tivities” (but your can call it whatever the heck you want) and all it is is (drum roll) … putting stuff you already own in bags and labeling it. I put out 3 bag-tivities each day and, over the course of the week, replace 1 or 2 at a time as needed to keep things interesting. And I think that’s really the magic of this plan. Keep things interesting.

I mentioned on my Instagram post about this that I think this system is rooted in the notion of surprise and possibility. Kinda that “mystery box” idea from JJ Abrams. That sense of revelation has definitely motivated my kids; what works for us is that combination of something expected (one hour of bag-tivities at the same time every day) and something unexpected (what will today’s bag-tivities be?)

So without further ado (because oops, that was a lot of ado) here is my…

list of BAG-TIVITY ideas:

And remember - the best thing is you can tailor this idea to what you know will work for your kids because your kids aren’t my kids and I don’t pretend to have a clue what your kids like!

• SNAIL MAIL: include notes and envelopes, stamps, an example of how to address an envelope, and the addresses of friends, family, school friends/teachers, the mayor, your favorite contestants on Lego Masters, whomever!

• COLORING PAGES/BOOKS: if you don’t already have a stash of these at home, print some and stick them in a bag with a curated set of coloring utensils, maybe a box of very dull colored pencils and a pencil sharpener (that ought to buy you some time)? This week I’m going to use these Octopus coloring sheets from Gabe Pyle, author and illustrator of 14 Animals That Are Definitely Not an Octopus.

• JUMBLE STORIES: for this I filled a jar with little slips of paper with a thing on each one. I called it the jar of things. (I know - so clever.) They choose 3-4 things from the jar of things and they have to write a story that includes all of those things. PRO TIP: Include both “fart” and “poop” in your jar of things as well as favorite animals and specific things like “the smallest pencil” and “the saddest sloth” - makes for very dynamic story telling.

  • VARIATION from my friend Lindsay (that applies to lots of these bag-tivities). Using plain old copy paper and a stapler, you can make a blank book for your kids to write/draw their story. Stapling it together like a real book makes your kids’ stories super legit.

• DISNEY MAD LIBS and MASH UPS: I made lists of princesses, villains, sidekicks, things, and extras - then wrote mad libs that the girls had to fill in. This would work without mad libs; just make this a version of Jumble Stories - pick one villain, one princess, and one sidekick and write a new story. etc. (Bonus points if you can remember all the Disney descendants’ names from the Descendants movies ‘cause I sure as heck couldn’t). (Maybe this would work with other universes of characters - Pokemon? Marvel? DC? Star Wars? Not sure…)

• MATH GAMES: a couple of decks of cards and the hand outs from school on math games. Oh - did I forget to mention that? Putting school work in a bag-tivity so it feels less like school work and more like fun? Oh yeah. I did that. Like sneaking vegetables into cookies. BOOM. If you didn’t get hand outs from school just google math games with decks of cards.

  • VARIATION: Set of DOMINOES with a short list of ANY of the fabulous domino/math game ideas on the internet.

• SPANISH CLASS: this was mostly stuff my parents sent - some dry erase notebooks to practice Spanish. But you could do this with a pen, some paper, the internet, and washi tape. You make little labels with the Spanish word for stuff around the house and have your kids distribute the labels. (Use literally ANY language you want for this. Obvi.)

• LEGO MASTERS CHALLENGE: I grabbed a bunch of random stuff around the house and invited my kids to recreate it in LEGO. Once you flip that LEGO switch in your brain, you’ll see that SO many things around your house would be fun to recreate in LEGO. A cereal box. A jar of Vick’s VapoRub. One of those little dishwashing detergent pod thingies. A roll of toilet paper.

  • VARIATION: (from @bookmark.kids on Insta) LEGO contests and challenges with friends and family over video chat. @bookmark.kids says that the grandparents started it by building something out of LEGO and inviting the kids to build something based on that theme. There is voting and prizes and winners and the winner gets to pick the new theme!

  • VARIATION: a #kidlit themed challenge where they have to recreate characters, scenes or images from favorite picture books.

• MAGAZINE CUT OUT ART: Include in your bag a big stack of periodicals, enough scissors and glue sticks for each kid, and some paper. PRO TIP: Give them an empty envelope to collect their cutting scraps in.

• SHAVING CREAM: Surely I don’t even need to explain this one? Add food coloring if you want. Send the kids outside or get a tarp. I gave my kids foil pie pans and mini muffin tins to use.

  • EDIBLE VARIATION: Whipped cream in a can!

• PLAY DOUGH: An idea from my friend Lindsay - just plop some play dough in a bag and give the kids some prompts to spur them on. Maybe limit the colors you give out in each bag according to the prompts you give them. A few colors to make a flower. Other colors to make a unicorn. Just one tub of brown play dough and tell them to make a poop emoji? (That last one was my idea. Lindsay’s ideas were far less … scatalogical.)

• COMICS: If your kids are into graphic novels, these print outs from Jarrett Lerner are great. He has blank comic panels (use with Jumble Stories?!) or Finish This Comic printouts. I just got a copy of Lynda Barry’s new book, Making Comics, so I thought I’d throw that into the bag, too.

• SWEETGUM BALLS: On Saturday I went up and down my street collecting these sweetgum balls. I just have a bag full of them. I honestly don’t know exactly what I’ll do except throw some paint and paper in there and tell the kids to have at it?

• CRAFT KITS: This totally hadn’t occurred to me until a friend, Joanna, mentioned it. We have tons of these kinds of things in the craft bin upstairs, all lumped together and forgotten about. I can pull them out one by one and (you guessed it) put them in a bag.

• EXERCISE: Haven’t given this one a clever name yet (any suggestions?) but I’m just going to put a pair of dice in the bag with some ideas for work outs. Like - roll the first die to determine which exercise you do and roll the second die to determine the reps. Something like that. Google “roll the dice workouts for kids” and you’ll see that there is NO shortage of ideas out there!

• DECODERS: Also a million of these out there! In fact I’m still collecting these. This is another easy one: a bag-tivity that’s just stuff printed off the internet. Really not a ton of work on your part if you know how to google.

• STUFFIES and LOVIES: This idea came from Kate of @thepicturebookcook - I haven’t tried it yet but it’s a good one! A bag of your kids’ stuffed animals with writing prompts or art assignments; perhaps invite your kids to make a list of favorite stuffed animals and what they thing their favorite snack would be. (I think it’d be fun to make it a journalism assignment - interview your stuffies to find out their favorite colors, food, games, etc.)

• KIDS COOKING: Again, haven’t tried this one but … we have a couple of kids cookbooks here. Thought I’d put some of those in a bag with a pen and notepad and invite the girls to each choose a recipe they’d like to make with me and to make a list of ingredients and (maybe even) do inventory in the kitchen to see if we have what we need?! We’ll see. Or maybe we’ll just watch Ratatouille.

• POET TREE: I got this idea from @DarlingReaders who posted about these printable leaves from ShelSilverstein.com. I brought in a giant dead branch from the yard and put it in the living room. We also printed this haiku prompt from Jarrett Lerner and used that to write our own poems to put on the Poet Tree. Julia started the week out saying “I hate poetry!” but came around to it once I put up the tree.

• STITCHING CURVES (string art): For this I’m using this MATH GAMES LAB FOR KID book - it has a lot of resources! They have a few downloads online but the book is a great resource on its own; I recommend it. Stitching Curves is making parabolas by stitching. Here’s one explanation I found online.

• FUN WITH MAPS: Again using this MATH GAMES LAB FOR KID book - specifically a few downloads online for map coloring. There are tons of maps online for coloring - the fun challenge here was figuring out how many colors you need if you don’t want any two colors to touch.

• FLOWER PRESS: Gather little blossoms and leaves from the yard - press them in a flower press or between newspaper between two giant books.

• EGG HUNT IN THE HOUSE: I filled plastic eggs with LEGO pieces - but you could fill them with whatever you’d like - reuse leftover Easter candy!