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Encourage the Frontlines

~Color a rainbow picture and place it on your door to support healthcare workers, police, delivery, pharmacy and grocery personnel.

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~Chalk the driveway to thank the front line workers. Post and tag them on social media. 

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~Chalk the driveways of your neighbors or friends that are front line workers.

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~Make and laminate encouraging pictures to allow them to be wiped down. Deliver them or mail them.

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~Make a basket at the end of your driveway or front porch with items of gratitude for front line workers.

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~Send food or treats to your local fire station, police station or hospital from a local restaurant, bakery, Door Dash, Grub Hub, Uber Eats.

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~Offer to sew masks, hats or surgical gowns for local hospital staff if they're accepting donations. Here is a link to a tutorial: https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/2020/03/18/coronavirus-deaconess-ask-public-provide-medical-face-masks/2865273001/?fbclid=IwAR26Lw2-kZwSDLZbG1O5FSXYMyuuC_qJZDAeEkZjlzscdnzyhxFhzF86CR0

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~Add your favorite charity to Amazon Fresh, Prime Now and Smile.Amazon.com deliveries. It costs you nothing because Amazon donates their own profits. Alex's Sunnyside Playroom and many charities are recipients, if chosen. 

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~Start a social media viral campaign challenging 3M, Proctor & Gamble and local hospital systems to get the PPE that the frontlines need. Sign the petition https://www.change.org/p/hospital-administrators-us-physicians-healthcare-workers-for-personal-protective-equipment-in-covid-19-pandemic-do-not-donate

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Email to request more ideas
Kids with Masks

Helping Our Kids

Toddlers/preschool age?
✔ Pinterest for science experiments like sidewalk chalk with cornstarch and water, food coloring for fun. It melts in their hands, they can throw it on the ground and it will melt.
✔Waterbeads fun in a large Tupperware container.
✔ If it snows again, put bowls out to collect new fallen snow. Turn it into snow cones or make your own ice cream with Borden's sweetened condensed milk.
✔ Make puppets out of old socks and have a puppet show.
✔ Put on a stuffed animal parade.
✔ Have a science experiment tea party. Put white vinegar in their play tea cups with some food coloring. Put baking soda in a "sugar play cup" and watch the science experiment. Highly recommend putting a baking sheet under the tea party.
✔ Do an indoor picnic in your living room for lunch.
✔ 1+1+1=1 is a great resource for themed play packs
✔ Paint the sidewalk with water and paint brushes
✔ Put on bathing suits, fill up the bathtub, put shaving cream with food coloring on the wall and have them finger paint.
✔ Grab all your sea animal play items, put blue food coloring and salt into water in a large container and have them pretend they're playing sea life.

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Elementary Kiddos?
✔ Look up heavy work activities. It'll help everyone get their energy out and stay sane.
✔ Do animal walk races in the living room.
✔ Grab stuffed animals or figurines and play hide-and-go-seek with them.
✔ Harptoons has wonderful follow along cartoon drawing for kids. He is doing LIVE FB video drawings at 2p. ✔ Mo Willems has lunchtime doodles offered here: https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/mo-willems/
✔ Have an UNbirthday party or a stuffed animal birthday party.
✔ Teach them that family recipe now.
✔ Play minute-to-win-it games as a family.
✔ Make an escape game at home.
✔ Build forts with blankets, pillows, 🔦 and pretend you're camping. 

✔ YouTube channel StorylineOnline has SAG (VERY FAMOUS) actors reading picture books to kids with animation. A MUST!!!

 

   Former First Lady Michelle Obama     also has PBS read aloud's on       Mondays on YOUTUBE at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeqBfv07lWE

✔ Print out comic strip blank pages and have your children create a comic book or comic strip. 

✔ Put on a talent show at home. 

✔ Play the telephone game. 
✔ Play charades. Play hangman. Play win, loose or draw. 
✔ Do Lego sets together.
✔ Fondue together, kids ❤ it! Have a dessert party with various homemade desserts.
✔ Have them be the director to a play that you have to act in.
✔ Do a hand-print canvas, quilt or blanket of your family for a forever keepsake.
✔ Make a scrapbook of their favorite sport or of their past year...old school with pictures, stickers, drawings.
✔ Cosmic Kids Yoga has great themed yoga the whole family can do.
✔ Download the headspace app and do guided meditation together. Everyone needs a de-stresser right about now.
✔ Do the old fashioned massage train that we used to do in elementary school.
✔ Make homemade dog treats for the animal shelter.
✔ Send virtual cards to kids at NCH and adults at The James Cancer Hospital or wherever you are located at.
✔ Grow butterflies and/or plants inside.
✔ Call the hospitals and/or fire departments to see if you can mail letters or pictures of encouragement to the docs/nurses/EMTs. (Gloved, of course)
✔Google Duo, Facebook Messenger or WhatsAp for video calling friends.

✔ Start a journal with your kids or email them funny or touching stories that they will always have. 

Need MORE Ideas?
Breathe

Handling Your Own Anxiety over the Pandemic

Start a gratitude journal. Write 1 item each morning you are grateful for. 

 

Get dressed, make the beds. Making the bed correlates with better productivity, greater sense of well-being and stronger skills at sticking with a budget (The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg)

 

Play with your pet, brush their fur, bathe them, hold them, pet them. Studies have shown a reduction of fear anxiety (psychological stress) and an increase of oxytocin levels in the brain.

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Grab your tennis shoes or work-out gear. The Cleveland Clinic reports that it improves memory and thinking ability, releases tension-fighting hormones (serotonin, dopamine & norepinephrine), helps you doze off faster and promotes REM sleep, boosts your mood and combats depression). 

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Do some rainbow breathing with your kids. Do bubble breathing or box breathing. 

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Download the Headspace app and do guided meditation or imagery.

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Get outside. Go on a walk. Sit on your porch. 

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Throw on some music and have a dance party. Music improves mood, help regulate hormones, create happiness, lessen anxiety, reduce stress, ease pain and provide comfort (Source: Harvard University).

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Sign up for telehealth mental health counseling.

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Get into a Zoom chat with your best friends, join an online book club, call friends on social media, send a challenge to your friends on social media.

Need more ideas?
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