Staycation: 150+ Activities That You Can Do From Home

Edited by Lydia Boubendir

With all the craziness going on in the world right now, we know that a lot of you are feeling stir-crazy and bored while you’re stuck at home during quarantine. We wanted to share a list of over 150 fun, unique things you can do at home to help get you through this! Please comment your favorites!

Virtual Museum Tours

Feel like taking a stroll through The Met right about now? Well, they (and 10+ other museums) got you covered, even during quarantine!

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

• British Museum in London

• Guggenheim Museum, New York

• National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

• Musée d’Orsay, Paris

• National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul

• Pergamon Museum, Berlin

• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

• Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

• J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

• Uffizi Gallery, Italy

• Museu de Arte, São Paulo

• National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City

• The Louvre, Paris

Online Concerts And Shows

You can stream nightly concerts and Broadway shows from the comfort of your living room… and have dance parties with your family in the meantime!

• Marie’s Crisis Piano Bar FB Livestreams

• Search “Concert” on Netflix and you’re given a TON of options! Including Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and more!

• 15 Broadway Plays and Musicals You Can Watch On Stage From Home

• Stream the Met Opera nightly for free

• Check out STAGEIT for access to “Shut in and Sing” events and online concerts

• NPR is keeping a live list of Virtual Concerts, updated daily

Learn Something New

While all the kids are schooling from home, no reason we can’t home-school ourselves a bit too!

• 450+ Ivy League Online Courses for FREE

• Learn a new language in as little as five minutes every day. Duolingo will even let you set up a “classroom” so you can set up accounts for the whole family. Drops is another app that makes learning a new language fun.

• Take a University Art Class – Artsy.net has a list of 10 classes you can take for free online.

• Coursera offers free online courses from many of the world’s top universities, covering a wide variety of subjects

• Become an Artist with Art ala Carte on YouTube.

• Code Academy offers a free online coding course

Learn How To Cook Something New

Thomas Keller, who? Cooking is a fantastic activity for any age. Pick up some skills with these great classes!

Free online cooking resources

• How to Cook - sent in by Liz Nelson! (Thank you Jennifer and Liz!)

• Top Chef University

• The Kitchn’s Cooking School

• Basic food techniques from the BBC

• Online cooking school from The New York Times

• Healthy Cooking Classes from Texas A&M

• Kitchen Chemistry online course from MIT

• Delia Online Cookery School

• How to Cook from Better Homes and Gardens

• Binging with Babish has weekly recipes, and a series of “Basics”

• Learn how to make Sourdough

Additional cooking resources that require a fee

• Gordon Ramsay Masterclass

• Wolfgang Puck Masterclass

• Cooking classes with a variety of topics from Udemy

• Cake Decorating tutorials with Cakeflix

• Gluten-Free Baking Academy

• Online Cooking School from America’s Test Kitchen

• How-to videos from Allrecipes

• Cake Decorating and Cooking classes from Craftsy

• Rouxbe Cooking School

• Foodist Kitchen Cooking Boot Camp

• Healthy Baking Bootcamp

• Food Network Kitchen

Working Out And Physical Wellness

Ever heard of the Freshman 15? Well now it’s the COVID-19! Since there’s nowhere to go, take a moment to focus on your well-being.

• Barre class at home!

• Yoga on Youtube

• Take an online YMCA Class with more than 60 to choose from. Free sign up!

• The Peloton App free trial has been extended to 90 days. And no, you don’t need the bike!

• CrossFit has a number of free beginner workouts on their website.

• Planet Fitness is doing a daily live stream on Facebook at 6 PM Central. These are also available on demand on their YouTube channel.

• If you have a backyard or porch, get some fresh air!

Take A Virtual Field Trip

Feeling some wanderlust and dying to get out of town? Do it from the comfort of your home!

• San Diego Zoo

• Yellowstone National Park

• Explore the Surface of Mars

• Live Animal Cams at the San Diego Zoo, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Zoo Atlanta, Houston Zoo, Georgia Aquarium, Smithsonian National Zoo, Reid Park Zoo, Ouwehand Zoo 

• Live farm cams from Farm Food 360

• The Great Wall of China

• Boston Children’s Museum

• Pompei

• Colonial Williamsburg

• Ellis Island

Get Lost In A Book

Is there anything quite like a good book? I love getting lost in the pages of a novel with a glass of wine in-hand. With libraries closed, you might want to turn to audiobooks or ebooks to scratch that literary itch.

• Audible.com has a large selection of free children’s books available for streaming

• Start a virtual book club with friends and meet using FaceTime or WhatsApp Video

• National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) usually takes place the November of every year, but they’ve put together Camp NaNoWriMo to keep young writers occupied if they are out of school. Learn more on Facebook.

• How about building a photo album for that trip you just went on?

• Just The Right Book! is a service that sends you customized book recommendations and supports local bookshops at the same time.

• You don’t need a Kindle to read eBooks. Visit the Kindle Cloud Reader or download the App to read books on your phone.  

Create Your Own Community 

Social distancing is just physical, not spiritual! Use this time to connect with the people you miss most, or to re-connect with those who are far away!

• Have an online cocktail party or happy hour with friend or family using Facebook Live or Google Hangouts

• Join local FB groups and community forums

Get Into A New Podcast

Want to take a break from listening to music? Put on one of our favorite podcasts for some learning and laughs!

Food

• The Sporkful

• Spilled Milk

• Gastropod

• Burnt Toast

  Entrepreneurship

• How I Built This 

• 99% Invisible 

True Crime and Scandals

• Disgraceland 

• Generation Why

• My Favorite Murder

• Small Town Murders

• To Live and Die in LA 

• Slow Burn 

Entertainment & Lifestyle

• Armchair Expert 

• Reply all 

• How Did This Get Made?

• LeVar Burton Reads 

• Overheard at National Geographic

• Mobituaries 

• Tannis 

• Song Exploder 

• Hearing the Pulitzers 

  Storytelling

• Risk

• This American Life 

• The Moth Radio Hour 

• Snap Judgement 

Comedy

• The Dollop 

• WTF

Binge Something New

If you have the feeling that you’ve watched everything there is to see on Netflix, try out some of these streaming alternatives!

• Sundance Now has a 30-day free trial with the code SUNDANCENOW30. This service offers thrillers, True Crime, and Dramas.

• Shudder has a 30-day free trial with the code SHUTIN. Shudder specializes in horror movies and thrillers.

• UMC has a 30-day free trial with the code UMCFREE30. UMC has the best in Black film and TV.

• Acorn TV has a a 30-day free trial with the code FREE30 and is full of British and Australian TV shows

• Crunchyroll has a 14-day free trial and access to anime

• IMDb TV is an ad-supported movie streaming services

Educational Activities For Kids

Need a break from being the parent and the teacher? Use some of these great resources for online learning for kids!

• Scholastic Remote Learning

• Science Mom will have daily science lessons on YouTube and Facebook every weekday at 10 AM Central.

• Art and Craft tutorial daily with McHarper Manor via their Facebook page

• Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems, Education Artist-in-Residence at the Kennedy Center

• 16 Card Games That Will Turn Kids into Math Aces

• 75+ Entertaining and Educational Activities for When You’re Stuck Indoors

• Virtual Lessons from Discovery Education

• Education Companies offering free subscriptions right now

Just Have Fun With The Kids 

• Create an indoor/outdoor scavenger hunt

• Make a pillow fort

• Do an art lesson with The Art Sherpa 

• Learn how to create pop art

Just Relax 

Self-care is everything!!!

• Watch 3 Minutes of Cats Playing with Dominos

• Meditate with apps like Meditation Studio, Brain.FM, or this Five Minute Meditation when you need a quick break.

• Go on nice, long walks!

• Face masks, bubble baths, or at home manicures always do the trick!