Parent’s Guide to Getting Through This

Here comes week two of everyone being home and I am sure that entertaining the kids is getting a bit harder day by day. We at What’s Up? Media have a tradition of ‘Guides’ to help our readers, from the Home Resource Guide (which is coming out in our April issues) to our Summer Dining Guide, so why not add one more. Here is our first ever Parent’s Guide to Quarantine.

Board Games:

Fun family entertainment can be board games. Clean the dust off the board games in the back of your closet and enjoy! Put your own twist to it, add your own extra rules. Fill out your own Apples to Apples cards, or write another task to the Jenga pieces. If spring cleaning caused you to donate your games, no worries. Amazon is still kicking! Here is a list of the top, cheap, two-day delivery games that you can find on Amazon and play soon!

  1. The Game of Life
  2. Candy Land
  3. Clue
  4. Sorry!
  5. Monopoly Frozen II Version
  6. Mouse Trap
  7. Apples to Apples
  8. Jenga

Card Games:

Board games are not for everyone, lets switch to card games. Most households have a deck of cards, (and if not, can be ordered from Amazon HERE), and there is an unlimited amount of games to play with them. Here are a few to get started with.

Slapjack - - 4-10 players

  • Have everyone sit in a circle around a table or on the floor. Deal clockwise until you run out of cards. Everyone holds their cards facedown without looking at them.
  • Going around the circle, each player draws a card from the top of their deck and places that card in the center of the circle. Each player continues to place their cards in the center this way.
  • When a Jack card is turned face up, the goal is to be the first person to “slap” it, or cover it with your hand. If several people slap at once, the person whose hand is most in contact with the Jack adds all the cards to his or her pile.
  • If a player incorrectly slaps a card, he or she must give the top card in his or her pile to the player who placed the slapped card. That player adds the extra card to the bottom of his or her deck.
  • When a player runs out of cards, the player is out—unless he or she can slap a Jack laid by someone else. At that point, the previously “out” player is back in and can play with the cards collected from the pile.
  • Play continues until one person wins all of the cards. For a shorter version, stop play when the first person runs out of cards. Whoever has the most cards in his or her hand is the winner.

Old Maid - -3+ players

  • Remove one Queen from the full deck
  • Deal the cards so that all cards have been handed out, players do not need to start with the same amount of cards.
  • Each player removes all pairs from his hand face down. If a player has three-of-a-kind, they remove only two of those three cards.
  • The dealer then offers their hand, spread out face down, to the player on the left, who draws one card from it. This player discards any pair that may have been formed by the drawn card.
  • The player then offers their own hand to the player on their left.
  • Play proceeds in this way until all cards have been paired except one - the odd queen, which cannot be paired - and the player who has that card is the Old Maid!

Mess Free Kid’s Crafts:

I understand not wanting to get out the sparkles and finger paint, but that doesn’t mean crafts are totally out of the picture. Here are some mess free crafts to keep the kids entertained while you enjoy your book.

Recipe’s to make with Kids:

Running out of snack ideas? Try some of these recipes with the smallest Sous chef.