Free Entertainment to Get You Through Self-Isolation
/With measures ramping up to control the spread of coronavirus, you’re most likely reading this cocooned in your home under lockdown or self-quarantine.
Schools, libraries, museums, shops and gyms have closed. Being alone at home all day can be hard. Luckily, there are a number of businesses who are now making their programming available via streaming to distract yourself from the surreal situation we're all finding ourselves in.
For kids
Island Hill Farms - Storytime with the animals
Every day at 1:30pm Island Hill Farms will film their beautiful animals and read a story. If you go to their Facebook page, they have some videos that they have already posted.
Audible – Free Audiobooks
Brave New World, Winnie the Pooh and Moby Dick are just some of the stories global audiobook retailer Audible is now offering for free as part of its Audible Stories collection. There are more than 100 full-length audiobooks and other titles to stream, which the company has made available as part of its response to coronavirus. All stories are free to stream:
Free Digital Cooking Classes For Kids
Delish's editorial director Joanna Saltz and her kids will be going live on Instagram every week day at 1pm EST to share cook-along videos for you and your little ones. Click here each week so you can sneak a peek at what they’ll be cooking (and make your shopping list). And don't stress if you can't join the class in real time; the videos will be saved on their Instagram for 24 hours.
San Diego Zoo
Schools are closed, but San Diego Zoo found a way to still see the animals with Live Animal Cams to watch and enjoy live streams of penguins, tigers, polar bears, giraffes, and much more.
Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems
Mo Willems invites you into his studio every day for his Lunch Doodle. Learners worldwide can draw, doodle and explore new ways of writing by visiting Mo’s studio virtually once a day for the next few weeks. Grab some paper and pencils, pens, or crayons and join Mo to explore ways of writing and making together.
Keeping Fit
Exercise: you either love it or you hate it. For those of you that love it, it might feel like the coronavirus outbreak is going to destroy your progress. But don't worry, there are ways around it. For those that hate it, you're probably excited that you can get away with chilling out and watching Netflix since gyms are closed! But exercising will strengthen your immune system and improve your mental health.
POP Pilates for Beginners - Total Body Workout
30 Min Beginner Weight Training for Beginners
20 Minute Interval Cardio Bodyweight Strength Training Workout
Culture Fix
The coronavirus has closed galleries and concert halls – but inspired an explosion of creativity to enjoy at home.
Social Distancing Festival
This genius idea celebrates art from all over the world and showcases amazing talent with music, dance, visual art, you can watch live events that are streamed daily.
Metropolitan Opera in New York
The Metropolitan Opera in New York will be hosting “Nightly Met Opera Streams”. Every night, the Met will be streaming an encore from its Live in HD series (the streams that movie theatres show) for free. The streams will start every night at 7:30PM EDT and will remain on the site for 20 hours.
La Bohème
Against the Grain Theatre, one of Toronto’s most exciting opera companies, has announced that the premiere of their new opera BOUND has been postponed indefinitely. In honour of that, they have submitted this video of their past production of La Boheme (it was the first live streamed opera in Canada, no big deal).
Learn a new skill
Have you always wanted to find the time to take up a hobby or learn a musical instrument that could one day transform you into a Rockstar? Here’s your chance.
Relax and unwind
Meditating
There are many ways meditation can help you. One of them is to train your mind to stay present rather than spin off into all the ‘what-ifs’, which add stress to your situation. It’s not to say you can’t think ahead and plan for the future, but meditation aims to help you have more control over when you want to do that – i.e. not when you’re trying to sleep.
5 Free Mindfulness apps:
Headspace, Calm, Aura, Stop, Breathe & Think and Insight Timer
Yoga
For many people, yoga provides a relaxing retreat. Yoga develops inner awareness. It focuses your attention on your body's abilities at the present moment. It helps develop breath and strength of mind and body.
20 min Full Body Stretch/ Yoga for Stress & Anxiety Relief
20 Minute Everyday Vinyasa Flow Yoga Class
Gratitude Jar
Every time you wish you could do something, go somewhere, treat yourselves, see someone we love, visit a new place, invite people to visit, write it down on a post it notes and put it in a jar.
When all this is over this will be your bucket list and you can work your way through the jar and be more grateful than ever for the little and lovely things in your lives. Until then enjoy watching the jar fill up with magical things to look forward to.
