If, like us, you’re slightly overwhelmed with all the time you have ahead of you, and the fact you can’t leave the house, then we have some (family friendly) free isolation activities for you to do.
National Theatre Live
The National Theatre are planning on live streaming some of their old NT Live performances (the ones you used to be able to watch in the cinema) on YouTube. The National Theatre at home plans to show at least 4 performances on Thursdays at 7pm, and you can catch up for 7 days after. Quite frankly this is one of the more excellent isolation activities.
Visit museums from your own home
One of our favourite isolation activities is this. There are some incredible museums in the world, even ones we don’t manage to visit when we aren’t inside all the time. So, why not take the opportunity to have a culture day! Head to some of the world’s most amazing virtual museums today. Here are our selection of our favourites, maybe we should write a whole post on what’s out there!
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Take a course from the OU
Britain’s prestigious distance learning provider, the Open University is has compiled a list of their free modules. There is so much on there, at all different levels and you don’t need to have A Levels to get on a course, you just pick your fancy. From learning about galaxies to philosophy, sheet music to sport and education, there is something there for everyone of all levels. You even get a free certificate of education at the end of it!
Take an Ivy League school module
Like the OU, there are a large number of Ivy League modules that you can complete online. They are a little bit more intense. Although this isolation activity is free to complete, in order to prove that you’ve done it – you need to pay $49 for the completion certificate. You can find the list of the courses compiled here.
Watch Animals
Quite frankly, sometimes when things are like they are, what you need is a good dose of animals. The latest isolation activities were quite intellectually challenging, but this one, well, it’s for everyone no matter their brain state. There are a number of zoos currently live streaming their animals, and we are here for it!
Living Coast Wild Planet Trust, UK
Workout
Have you found that you’re seemingly always commuting to the fridge? Yeah, us too. We’re attempting to ensure that we stay fit, as well as staying safe but it was getting quite repetitive. We found some amazing things that we love, but we’re aware that lots of this is personal preference. Whether you want to do yoga or a high powered work out, Joe Wicks’ PE for the nation (FYI he’s donating all his revenue to the NHS from this) or other things, Runners World collated the best live workouts going!
Mindfulness
Let’s be real here, all this chat about being productive is quite overwhelming. Our bodies are in a state of shock over this and dealing with the constant stresses and changes can be hard. We both know. We wrote a piece on how to beat anxiety when travelling, but it’s almost more important now. Taking time for yourself, to be mindful is so important. As is the realisation that you don’t have to be “doing” all the time. Take some time off, recover. It’s a good reason to be anti-social for once. There are so many ways that people have to get their mindfulness fix. We are really lucky that as Jess is a teacher we get Calm for free and use that for meditiation. We also use advice from the blurt foundation and this site was recommended by the NHS too.
Learn Korean
Love K-pop? Love learning languages? There are some amazing apps out there to help you, or you could get stuck in properly with a completely free language course and learn Korean for free! Our friend Iris is doing it, shes one of the best linguists we know, but she says its far easier than Japanese or Chinese or Russian…but we might have to take her word for it!
Travel?!
If like us you love to travel, and have had travel plans disrupted then why not travel from your own home. We were supposed to be going to Sweden last week, but instead we brought Sweden to us. OK, so we had limited resources and wanted to limit our time out of the house, but as far as travelling during this time goes, it was one of our most treasured isolation activities!
We found some fika (time to have coffee and food with friends) albeit virtually, we had Smorgas (open sandwiches) for lunch and vegetarian meatballs with peppercorn sauce for dinner, wrapped up under our thick jumpers and knitted blankets. It was as pure as we could make it! Hidden under the table is the 1000-piece jigsaw we had been working on all day too!
