While you’re doing your part and practicing social distancing, you’re going to be spending a lot more time inside at home. It’s easy to get into a slump and lose motivation to do much of anything.

The key to staying sane while self-isolating is staying productive. This doesn’t mean you have to have a plan for every minute of every day. But even checking off just one to-do each day might help you feel accomplished and set you up for success once we’re all let back out of captivity! Here are a few tasks you can keep yourself busy with over the next couple of weeks:

Get Your Taxes Done Early

Try to find the silver lining here: We’re being encouraged to stay home just as the tax deadline is approaching. 

Okay, there are better things to get excited about right now – decreased air pollution, companies offering freebies, and everyday people doing good things to help those who need it – but you’ll have to get your taxes done anyway. Think of this as your opportunity to get ahead of one of your chores. 

Do Your Workouts

One amazing way to reduce stress and anxiety (two emotions which are likely high right now) is to get moving. You don’t need gym access or hours of time to dedicate to a workout, either.

Plenty of free, at-home, bodyweight workout videos are available online. Choose from activities like HIIT cardio, yoga, Pilates, bodyweight strength training, Zumba, and more – whatever is most likely to get you exercising. 

If you’re working from home, find a shorter video to keep you active during your lunch break. Just ten to fifteen minutes is all you need to begin to feel the benefits!

Spring Cleaning

If Marie Kondo has taught us anything, clearing your space has more benefits than you might initially think. 

The state of your home can actually impact your mental health. Decluttering your space helps to declutter your mind and is another way to bring stress levels down. Not to mention it may be a bit of a workout in itself!

Organize Photo Albums

Spend some time reminiscing on vacations, family gatherings, and pictures of the kids when they were little. Print out your favourite photos and put them in an album. No printer? No problem – some great apps like Chatbooks exist to help families document their memories. Simply upload and organize your photos, and they will print and ship a memory book to you.

If you’re feeling creative, grab the kiddos and put together a family scrapbook!

Missing any schoolyear memories? Edge Imaging securely archives student photos, so it’s not too late to order! Visit our ordering site here.

Spending a couple of weeks at home might sound like a relief from busy everyday life and, for some people, the idea can sound downright exciting! But when you factor in that the “retreat” from society wasn’t a planned vacation you had time to prepare for, you can’t spend the time visiting friends and extended family or travelling somewhere sunny, and that all the places your kids love to visit are closed, a couple of weeks starts to look a lot longer.

So, how do you avoid 2+ weeks of the kiddos watching streaming services from morning ‘til night? Try scheduling a couple of evenings each week for a fun family activity.

Here are a few of our favourite ideas for when you need to turn off the TV or video games and get the fam together for a bit of quality time.

Cook Dinner Together

If you want to keep the kids busy for an hour, encourage them to appreciate healthy, home-cooked food, and get some help in the kitchen. This one’s a no-brainer!

Do a quick online search for kid-friendly recipes and get cooking! Classic kid favourites like spaghetti and meatballs are simple enough to keep those little hands busy.

Don’t be afraid to get a bit more adventurous with your recipes, either. Even if your kids are picky and claim not to like the meal you want to make, remember they’re more likely to try eating something they had a hand in making themselves.

Have A Game Night

Dust off those board game boxes, make some popcorn, and let the competitive spirits out!

If your kids are younger, game night is a great way to teach them how to be good sports. It can also teach them important life skills like patience, how to take directions, and how to take turns. Many board games also give kids the opportunity to learn how to strategize and learn from their own mistakes.

Organize Family Memories

Remember that family trip to Florida when the kids were little? They might not. Gather everyone together to go through some older photos on your phones, on your Dropbox account or housed on your social media accounts.

Once you’ve had your fill of reminiscing, choose your favourite pictures and print them at home for a fun arts and crafts project: building scrapbook pages together! Have every family member take charge of a specific page – for example, one person can design a page for a specific family vacation, one for events with the extended family, and one for documenting how the kids have grown year over year (we think school portraits are the perfect way to show this off). Personalize your pages by decorating with stickers and coloured construction paper cut-outs.

If you don’t have a printer at home, why not build your scrapbook digitally? Upload your favourite photo memories to a service like Chatbooks, where you can organize your photos and add captions and designs to the pages.

Missing any schoolyear memories? It’s never too late to order your digital or printed photos with Edge! Visit our online ordering site to get started today.

March Break is coming up quickly. For kids, this is super exciting: it means a whole week with no school! For parents who stay home during March break, getting some extra family time with the kids is fun, but there’s also the daunting task of keeping them entertained for a whole week…and stay on budget!

With a bit of planning, though, it’s easy to find enough free or cheap activities to keep the kiddos busy every day without ever having to hear the dreaded phrase “I’m bored”. We spoke to some industry experts to pull together a fun list of unique ideas for your kiddos to try during March Break:

Get Them Outside

• Go for walks in the snow or try snowshoeing: Let the kids get burn off some energy by being outside! Going for a family walk will help your kids’ physical development and emotional well-being, as well as give you an opportunity to talk and connect with them. For something a bit different, try snowshoeing.
• Hold a snowman-making contest: Invite over a couple of the kids’ friends and let them get to work building snowmen. Decide on a theme and give extra points for props and size. It’s a great way to combine physical activity with creativity.

Keep Them Creative

• Encourage writing: The more students write, the more they develop their creativity. Writing also helps kids develop self-expression, self-confidence, and communication skills. Check out our personalized notebooks; they come with plenty of blank pages, writing prompts, and spaces for doodling and colouring.
• Have them produce & perform a play: Parenting coach Elisabeth Stitt suggests gathering siblings and friends to write, produce, and act out a play to whatever audience they can gather. “With younger kids (3-6), they might just act out a story they know.   With kids 9-13ish, they could take multiple days to write a sophisticated script and to paint/construct scenes and props,” she says.
• Use snow to create art: Bring the outdoors inside to let your kids explore their creativity. We love this idea for salt snow art!

Get Them Thinking

• Board games: Bad weather might mean playing outside isn’t an option on a particular day, but the kids can still have fun inside without gluing themselves to a screen. “Board games have come a long way from Candy Land and Monopoly. There are some big-budget, highly produced games that can rival video games in terms of aesthetics,” suggests Bryan Truong of GameCows. “One of the newest trends in the board game world are Legacy games. The games themselves evolve and change after every playthrough. That means that every box will be a completely unique experience, and actions performed in the previous rounds will affect future playthroughs.”
• Puzzles: Good old-fashioned puzzles are a fun way to keep kiddos occupied at home during bad weather. The best part is that they come in different levels of difficulty to challenge and assist with the development of kids at any age.
• STEM toys: “While STEM toys are a little newer to the toy scene, they are a great way to keep the learning going in a fun and engaging way,” Angela Poch of Fun.com tells us. “STEM sets can involve kids in a variety of activities, from chemistry and science to math and coding.”

Get Them Trying New Things

• Start a business: Is one of your kids a real go-getter? Leah Remillét, founder of The CEO Kid, has created a fun way to help older kids stay entertained and earning money of their own by starting their own business! She says, “Inside the CEO Kid box they’ll have everything they need to start thinking like a CEO including access to an online portal that will help them take their idea and turn it into an OPEN sign. They could be earning money plowing sidewalks by the end of the week!”