Helping Your Tweens And Teens Connect Safely With Friends

Helping Your Tweens and Teens Connect Safely With Friends

We all know that tweens and teens want to be social in this time of physical distancing. Are your tweens and teens having difficulty with the lack of social interaction after a year of physical distancing? These difficulties may be even more pronounced in a military family going through a deployment. Here are some creative ways for your kids to gather and connect safely online. Zoom, Messenger groups, Google Meet, and FaceTime are all great options to use.  

Scavenger Hunts | Design a custom scavenger hunt with the GooseChase App. Parent serves as the game master to create the hunt. The game generates a list of items to find in the players homes and outside near their home, the items are revealed one at a time while the kids are online together. The first one to find the item and share it on camera gets a point. You can award a small prize at the end, or bragging rights! 

Paint Party | Bob Ross is making a comeback online! Originate a Zoom meetup and share a painting tutorial together. There are thousands to choose from on YouTube, get the group of friends to select one, and have their paint and canvas ready. Hint: most of the supplies can be purchased at the Dollar Store! At the end, everyone can share and compare their paintings.

Window Art | Hold a window decorating contest. Then have a drive-by parade of the participating homes to hold a vote. This will give you a chance to get out of the house and have some fun. A tried and true recipe for paint that is easy to remove is - 2 parts tempura paint and 1 part dish soap. 

Virtual Bingo | Try something different out with My FREE Bingo Cards online to have a virtual bingo party! 

Secret Pals | Use the FREE Elfster website to organize a group gift exchange. Establish a small spending limit, a designated amount of time, and get creative! You can even add clues with your gift to see if your recipient can guess who their gifter is. Get together online to reveal your secret pals. 

Drawize | This is a FREE online game like Pictionary that is a lot of fun! The results of the competition are good for laughs.

Murder/Escape Mysteries | Do you binge-watch crime shows? Do you miss escape room experiences/ You can host a FREE Virtual Murder Mystery or FREE Virtual Escape Room, that can be solved by a group of friends (FREE versions begin at #13 on each). It is even more fun if you dress up for the theme! Give it a try.

Trash Bag Fashion | Each member of the group gets 1 large black trash bag to use to design something fashionable to wear for a virtual runway show. You can limit the supplies that can be used, or the sky’s the limit for an over the top show. Let your creativity shine!

TikTok Duets | Your kids are already there, so use it to your advantage. Let the first teen choose a dance or lip-sync, then the next duets it, and the next duets that one, and so on… You will have a series of awesome (or not-so-awesome) duets creating an instant memory for all involved.

Costume Party | Choose a theme or make it a free-for-all! Parents can coordinate to deliver party snacks to each house so the group can munch on the same food during the soiree. This can be held online, or socially-distanced in a yard or park weather permitting.

Would You? | Hold a “Would You Rather?” event. Idea starters for questions are included in the link, or you can have the players come up with their own questions. 

Being social is important for maintaining our mental and emotional health. Hopefully you and your teens will find some of these ideas worthwhile. Let us know how it goes in the comments below. We would like our blog to be a place when we can share great ideas to make life easier, and a bit more fun.