Sleepathome Camp (Activities for Kids and Adults)

Are you running out of ideas to keep yourself and/or your kids occupied? Are you social distancing at home (yay!) but missing the organized activities of summertime day camps so you don’t have to do all the work yourself? (boo!)

Then Sleepathome Camp is the daily email for you!

Since March 10, Sleepathome Camp has been a reliable resource for at-home activity ideas for kids and adults who are no longer able to attend (in-person) work, school, or summer camp. For 134 days (and counting!), their daily email has offered a brand-new activity suggestion from one of seven themes (see below for examples) along with links to previously-published activities that fit the same theme.

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The full archive of activities is also available online if you want to pick-and-choose the activities that best fit your mood, interests, or access to supplies/the outdoors (for activities that involve crafting or time spent in nature.

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Activity ideas from the archives:

Writing Days

• Day 21: Sci-fi Sales Pitch: Create an ad from the future. Think about what future civilizations need (or what they are willing to buy), and sell it to them.
• Day 55: Not-So-Strictly Business: Make a 5-minute Powerpoint presentation about something you find interesting. (If you don’t have Powerpoint, Google Slides is a free, online alternative—no downloads required)
• Day 84: For Posterity: Document what your life is like right now. We’re living through history, and it’s worth writing about—on paper.
• Day 105: Redacted: Try blackout poetry. Learn how to write it and check out some poems by Austin Kleon.

Arts & Crafts Days

• Day 8: Waving Hello: Design your own flag. Your home is literally your castle now, and a castle needs a flag. Get inspiration with this SVG flag generator.
• Day 29: X Marks the Spot: Draw a map of your neighborhood. Draw from memory or customize Google Maps to stylize a real-world map. And don’t forget the map key!
• Day 56: Pop!: Make a pop-up book or card. All you need is paper, scissors, and glue, and a tutorial. Get started on your holiday cards early or make something nice for a relative, friend, or person who needs comfort in these difficult times.
• Day 78: Happy Belated Towel Day: Pretend you’re on a cruise and make some towel animals.

Self Care Days

• Day 9: Scrub-a-Dub-Dub: Make an easy DIY hand scrub.
• Day 86: Rituals: Establish a small daily ritual. Feel gratitude, make your bed, spend time outside—there’s lots of ways to benefit from a small daily tweak to your new pandemic normal.
• Day 93: Go Take a Hike: This one is pretty self-explanatory.
• Day 122: All the Fun of Travel, Without the Travel: Plan a future vacation. (Just don’t take one until it’s safe to do so!)

Picture Days

• Day 10: Look How Much You’ve Grown: Find a photo of yourself as a kid, and reenact it.
• Day 17: Strike a Pose: Get dressed up and stage a red carpet photoshoot. (AAA film premiere not included)
• Day 51: A Change of View: Take a photo from the perspective of your pet. (Bonus points if your pet is a fish, because I bet that perspective is really interesting.)
• Day 73: The Name’s Biv. Roy G. Biv: Take photos of things in every color of the rainbow. It’s like a mini-scavenger hunt. (Bonus points if you go crazy and expand the photo challenge to include the 64 Classic Crayola Crayon Colors)

Food & Drink Days

• Day 25: Up To Scratch: Cook something from scratch that you’d normally buy. With links to tutorials on how to make pasta, butter, bread, and yogurt
• Day 45: Retro Recipes: Make a vintage recipe. You can find them online or possibly in your own never-used-hand-me-down-cook-books.
• Day 52: Make Things Sparkle: Add sprinkles. To everything. (I’ve never met a kid—or adult—who wouldn’t enjoy this challenge.)
• Day 109: Play With Your Food: Make some food art. If you’ve ever been on Pinterest, you’ve probably seen the most gorgeous food art imaginable: elaborate bento lunch boxes.

Games & Puzzles Days

• Day 26: Hush-hush: Exchange secret messages with a partner-in-crime. You can use a code or cipher or invisible ink.
• Day 46: Sporting Events: Invent a sport that can be played during social distancing. Or invent a sport you can safely play with your small inner circle. Logic need not apply.
• Day 75: Now Boarding: Play a board game online. A very kind soul has assembled a list of virtual versions of dozens of classic board games (and more!) which you can play with your friends without being in the same room.
• Day 125: A Clever Rearrangement of Some Text, Incorporating Clues: Solve an acrostic. WARNING: These puzzles are HARD, even for adults! (I should know, I failed at many of them. I couldn’t find a good link for easy acrostic puzzles for kids to play online, but Lovatts’ Puzzle Fun for Kids has some great alternative kid puzzles—no downloads or printing required.)

Adventure Days

• Day 33: Antiques Homeshow: Find the oldest thing in your house, and learn about its history. Bonus points: is it actually valuable?!?! (Sentimental value counts!)
• Day 47: For Science! Help scientists count penguins. (Apparently there is a thing called Penguin Watch, and if you don’t hear from me for the next month, that’s why.)
• Day 61: History Has Its Ups and Downs: Research the history of your neighborhood. It might be way more interesting than you think.
• Day 126: All Tied Up in Knots: Learn to tie some knots with Animated Knots By Grog. Never underestimate the power of a knot that can be tied, untied, and tied again.