The holidays are a wonderful time when friends and family come together…and your kids are out of school while you are trying to work! We’ve all been there: baking special dishes, keeping the kids entertained, and juggling work. It’s not easy, and over the years we’ve learned a few fun activities that you can give to the kids to keep them busy while you try to work from home. And, if you ever feel overwhelmed, remember there is an entire community of moms around you to offer support! There is lots of great inspiration online, but below are eight of our favorite things to do!

1) Coloring

A tried and true method of keeping your kiddo busy, offer them something to color! You can choose holiday related items, color by numbers, and even coloring puzzle games. Besides scoping out some free printouts online, if you have more than one child, you can also ask your children to draw something, and then they swap drawings to color them in!

2) Reading

If you know you have an important meeting that you cannot miss, make that reading time for your children! They can enjoy their favorite book quietly while you are able to participate in your meeting. If your child is not an avid reader, you can also find audio books for them to listen to, or you can also search for story times on YouTube where someone can read them a book with visuals included.

3) Baking

Creating delicious treats in the kitchen? Bring the kids! They can help with fun tasks like mixing and measuring. You can even create some plain sugar cookies that they can work on decorating while you put together other things — or you can turn it into a family event, and everyone can come together and decorate.

4) Crafting

Stick with the classics and ask your kids to draw you “hand turkeys” where they trace their hands and turn those into turkeys! Give them paper Christmas trees and let them decorate them with fun things like little pom poms, strings, etc. Or, if they are old enough, they can cut out their very own snowflakes by folding paper into small squares, and then making small cuts into the paper. When they unfold it, the paper will have neat designs that make them look like snowflakes!

5) Movie Marathon

Line up some holiday favorites and let your kiddos enjoy a movie marathon! If you have a long day of work ahead of you, a movie marathon can be just the thing to keep your kids entertained so you can work and attend meetings.

If you aren’t a fan of sitting your kids in front of the TV, let them make their own holiday movies! They can spend the day writing scripts and maybe filming the movies if you have a camera they can borrow. At the end of the day you can all watch the movies together, or the kids can perform the skits they created for you.

6) Scavenger Hunt

If you don’t mind putting in a little extra time, creating a scavenger hunt for your kids can be a great way to get them up and moving whether it is indoors or out. You can hide objects for them to find using clues, or you can ask them to find specific things such as a pine cone — whoever collects all the objects first wins! OR, let your kiddos create a scavenger hunt that you have to follow at the end of the day after work.

7) Clean Your Room Show

Even as adults, we’ve all done this: you go to clean out your living space, and you end up spending time messing around with the things you find! Ask your kids to clean their room and put together all the fun things they find. This can be anything from crazy outfits they’ve styled from their closet to toys they forgot existed that have now been rediscovered after cleaning!

8) Play Board Games

Take a break from work, and get your kiddos off their phones and have them play board games or even card games! If you only have one kiddo, don’t worry! There are lots of card games you can teach them to play by themselves, and you can encourage them to play against themselves on board games for fun. If you’re into apps, you can download some board game apps on your phone where players can choose to play against one another or the computer. By extension, you can also encourage your kids to play video games. If it is a single player game, tell them they have to switch every five minutes with the controller — it can be hilarious and fun to watch what each kiddo does with their time (and it can help foster sharing too!).

If you want more ideas, check out this article. How do you keep your kiddos entertained over the holidays while you work? Tell us about it so we can share it with our audience!