For those who are now working from home or otherwise in isolation due to the coronavirus, what are your top safe and healthy tips for beating boredom and staying active? Please share your recommendations with the Community.
CHOICE staff were asked to contribute their top tips for keeping the kids busy, read their advice here:
All of the Choice Community Tragics will probably continue to hangout on the website all day everyday, subject to the coronavirus.
It’s great to have people sharing their experiences here, both new and experienced!
No kids to worry about here, so I’ve been going for long solo bike rides on quiet back roads in the mornings, over 1500km so far this month, feeding the trout fingerlings, watching the live Guardian and ABC CV feeds, and of course keeping up here 
That’s been my usual routine for a couple of months now.
Great stuff! I find going for a ride is a great way to break up the day and stretch the legs, especially if the roads are getting a little quieter.
Get the kids involved with home cooking; teach them some simple basic cooking skills; let them be creative with decorating cupcakes and Easter eggs.
Make sure they help with the clean up and they’ll be busy for hours 
Hoping for some slave labour to be sent out to the farm 
Unfortunately no kids are volunteering … feeble excuses about “oldies” & no mobile signal.
Most people I know are trying to start food gardens. Get them digging their own patch, sowing seed, starting seedling punnets, testing soil, making compost, setting up a chook house, reading about it & bees, seed saving etc.
We’ve got 400 years of projects. We are also used to “working from home” that’s what a farm is. Self isolation holds no problem for us.
Trying being the operative word! Around here at least. Bunnings and all the nurseries have completely sold out of food seedlings.
We are just about to start producing winter veg seedlings and veg in bulk, to sell. My wife is a horticulturist, and I run the aquaponics system with more than enough fish poo for fertilser 
My son had his first virtual dance class yesterday. After his dance studio had to close face-to-face classes, they have offered virtual classes, and it was actually fantastic. He still got to so something he loves, and interact with his class mates via video.
At this point his dad and I are still considered essential enough to keep working, so we only have to find things to keep him busy after school when his other activities have been cancelled and family activities on the weekends. We have plans to build a “ninja warrior” style obstacle course as a family in our very large back yard for fun and fitness, and the kid has decided to put some effort into training our recalcitrant dog. Kid and I started a sewing project together on the weekend (making him a cooking apron) that should last a few weeks, and dad has plans for some family woodworking projects as well.
We will miss our weekend dining and park visits, and I will miss my gym, but I think we will manage.
It may prove to be a great waytime to do those jobs around the home…which have been put off and out off.
With the children involved in doing the jobs, it allows parents to pass on invaluable experience and information about how to maintain a home. Children will have life lessons which they will take with them for the rest of their lives.
Since schools and day cares are closed and the parents are teachers and principals, ‘graduate’ the children with a certificate and send them off to Centrelink and Job Network, certificate in hand.
Waiting on the phones or in the queues will keep them occupied in the near term, and then submitting mindless job applications to meet their application quotas will keep them occupied in the longer term. Once life resumes they might look forward to being engaged with robodebt and learn about the intricate workings of the agency tasked to help them in times of their need.
(apologies for the possibly poor attempt at satire)
(https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/12-virtual-museum-tours-kids-230000199.html)
https://www.thetoymaker.com/TOYLISTNEWSLETTERS/…/20TM03.html
https://www.apieceofrainbow.com/creative-stay-at-home-activities-for-kids-family/?fbclid=IwAR0IY4IHGD30AkH5v-loOET59H5efJctV4dA7ShaBt9DZr7h1nggdnotOug.
Thank heavens I have been saving my own seeds for years! Now is just the right time to sow winter veggies and herbs.
My son is working from home - and I mean working, so no chance to get bored. Friends seem to think that as he is home they can drop in for coffee, but he is sticking to work routines and logging on at 7.00 each morning as usual - no visitors. He loves it - no shirts to iron, no crowded trains journeys. He takes breaks and waters his plants, skims the pool, all the stuff he normally does each evening. .Lots of online contact with the other workers at home, so he doesn’t feel isolated - he never wants to work in an office again!
Peas planted in the aquaponics system on Friday. I’ll soon be clearing out the pumpkin vines and planting more winter veg. I reckon we can go many weeks without a visit to town, although there wont be much fruit, as 2 years of drought meant I did not preserve any cherries, apricots, mulberries, plums etc. 
Saw a creative idea today while out walking in my suburb. Someone had gotten their kids researching trivia questions, simple maths problems and riddles. These were chalked onto the footpath with the answers another 20 metres or so further on. This would have taken the kid/s a while to organise. They had also chalked arrows to other items of interest - “fence art” and teddy bears in windows.
Heaps of possibilities here:
Self-improvement:
China is offering online courses. There’s a risk that they’ll exploit the opportunity to peddle ideology. Perhaps Australia could fight back by offering free courses of our own.
[edit]
But there are risks:
Kid discovered my ancient and decrepit stamp collecting album in one of my boxes during an ISO cleanup, and he wad really interested, so I picked up a new album and some random packs of stamps when I was at the post office for work, and we’ve been having a blast looking at and arranging all the stamps, from different times and far flung places.
