Stay connected with the little ones in your life and plan a fun activity from afar.
As much as grandparents love spending quality time with their grandkids in person, sometimes distance gets in the way. Whether you live far apart or are limited by physical distancing guidelines, there are still a variety of fun summer activities to do with grandkids from afar!
With the help of modern technology, here are some great virtual summer activities to do with grandkids:
- Read a book over video or phone call
- Have a show you always watch together
- Play the “story game”
- Share a family recipe over video
- Draw collaboratively with an app
- Play games on Houseparty
- Put together a virtual puzzle
Learn more about how to do these virtual summer activities with grandkids below.
Read a book over video or phone call
Sharing a story is one of the most classic grandparent-grandkid activities that you can do! And many video chat apps make it easy to uphold the tradition virtually. If your grandkids are young, you can read a picture book and hold the pictures up to your camera. If they’re a little older, pick a chapter book together, and read one chapter together every time you have a call. If hearing loss prevents you from connecting via video conferencing software or a traditional phone, a captioned telephone can help you catch every word!
Have a show you always watch together
If there’s a special TV show that you and your grandkids enjoy, set up times to watch new episodes together! You can call them during or after the show to talk about what happened that week. Or, do the same thing with your favorite family-friendly movies.
Play the “story game”
This virtual summer activity to do with grandkids can be done verbally or in written form. The story game involves going back and forth to create a story together. If you’re writing, you can take turns adding new paragraphs, sentences, and/or pictures to a shared document like Google Docs. If you’re playing the game on a phone or video call, try having your grandkids each add three words at a time to the story and see where it goes!
Share a family recipe over video
Teaching recipes is a wonderful way to spend time together and helps keep family traditions alive. With a little advanced planning, this virtual summer activity to do with grandkids can easily be done with a video chat! Let your grandchild’s parent or guardian know the ingredients they’ll need to buy and stock up on the same for yourself. Then, set up an afternoon to cook the recipe together while you share tips, chat, and laugh with the family.
Draw collaboratively with an app
Are your grandkids budding artists? Encourage their creativity and awaken some of your own, too, with this fun virtual summer activity! To create a shared drawing, you can use Canvas on Apple devices, Draw Together on Android, or Aggie on your computer web browser. The creative possibilities are endless!
Play games on Houseparty
Houseparty has become a popular app during quarantines, and it’s a great option for virtual fun with grandkids too. It’s available on Android, iOS, and web browsers, so you can connect no matter what kind of device you have. Video chat while you play games like Pictionary-style word associations, and a game where you help each other guess what animal you’re acting like (perfect for young kids!). You and your grandkids are sure to have a blast with this virtual summer activity.
Put together a virtual puzzle
If you have puzzle lovers in your life, your grandkids will love this next virtual summer activity. Thanks to technology, you can even put together jigsaw puzzles online! On Ravensburger, you can create puzzles from colorful pictures or pretty nature scenes, make the game public, and have your grandkids find it on the Active Games homepage. If you’re an art lover, you can go on SkillGamesBoard to invite your grandkids to a puzzle based on a famous artist’s work like Rembrandt or Picasso.
These virtual summer activities can make it easy to connect with the little ones in your life from afar. Explore more senior living ideas on our blog.
