20 Fun Things To Do At Home When You Can’t Travel

Many people are currently stuck at home and wondering what to do to keep from being bored. There are quite a few things online to do if you have the time along with some things to do around your house. Here are 20 fun things to do at home to entertain, educate, learn a new skill, or kill time when you can’t travel. Enjoy!

Virtual Tours Through Museums

For those who love to travel and visit museums all over the world, this is perfect! You get to tour museums virtually without stepping out of your front door. You can lounge on your couch in your pajamas and tour the Louvre, MET, even NASA. If you are looking for even more museums to tour virtually, this site has a collection of several lesser-known virtual museums.

Watching the Metropolitan Opera Live (Almost)

The Metropolitan Opera recently announced that it would stream encore presentations of its famous shows. You will be able to watch Carmen, La Bohème, and La Traviata ( I saw this in Vienna and it was fabulous). Beginning on March 16, the Met will stream a title from its Live in HD series each night through the duration of the closure. The performances, originally captured as live broadcasts in movie theatres worldwide, will begin at 7:30 PM from the Met Opera’s homepage. (The featured performances—and several others—are available via the Met Opera on Demand subscription service, though the videos in the nightly series will be made available for free for 20 hours following the initial stream).

Storyline Online

Storyline Online is an award-winning children’s literacy website that streams videos of actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations. You might choose a book that is read by Viola Davis, Chris Pine, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, James Earl Jones, or Betty White. Each book includes a supplemental curriculum aimed to strengthen comprehension and verbal and written skills for English-language learners. You can pick a book on their website. Happy Reading!

Read a Book

Staying home and curling up on a couch with a good book is the perfect recipe for a rainy day or any day in my opinion. You can order books from Amazon to have them delivered or have them sent directly to your kindle or e-reader. I have a great list of travel books if you are interested in reading any of them. If you are an Amazon Prime member, you get one free book on kindle every month. How many of us have books stacked on coffee and bedside tables? This might be a great time to knock them off your to-do list. If you are unsure of what your next book should be, check out the website What Should I Read Next?

Learn a New Language

While you are dreaming and planning your next vacation, why not learn the language before you get there. I have done this a few times months ahead of my trip. My last one was learning Czech before a big trip. It was fun trying to learn a language that doesn’t have a lot of vowels in it. I was able to order a complete meal in Czech so well that they thought I was fluent in it. Thank you, Duolingo for that great experience.

Take an Italian Cooking Class Online

How would you like to have an Italian Cooking Class right in your own home with a cute 84-old Italian grandmother? In this 2-hour live streaming experience, you will connect with Nonna Nerina and her granddaughter Chiara as they walk you through a mouth-watering cooking experience of their favorite family recipes in the comfort of your own home! You will get a shopping list a week before the class. Each recipe that you cook will be from their own family going back generations and they will send you some of their favorite wine pairing suggestions should you be so inclined! You can schedule your Italian Cooking Class with Italian Grandmothers here. Bon Appetit everyone!

Enjoy Watching New Netflix Shows

When I stay at home for a period of time I love binge-watching Netflix (Hulu, CBS All Access, Amazon Prime) shows especially new ones. A great way to find some new material for you to watch is to send out a Facebook post to your friends. Everybody is more than happy to give you their favorite suggestions which should give you at least a couple of new shows that you haven’t seen before.

Listen to the Philharmonie Berlin

Are you a fan of classical music? The Philharmonie in Berlin is inviting you to listen to their virtual concert hall free of charge. Log on to the Digital Concert Hall ticket page with the code BERLINPHIL and use the Digital Concert Hall free of charge for 30 days. Cancellation is not required. The latest date for redeeming the code is Tuesday, 31 March 2020. If you are not yet a user of the Digital Concert Hall, registration – without obligation – is required. “We hope that through this initiative we can give pleasure to as many people as possible with our music.”

Virtual Field Trips

Besides the tours through the museums, the families that have homeschoolers can take virtual field trips. You can visit the San Diego Zoo, Yellowstone National Park, the Great Wall of China, and even MARS. What an excellent way to keep kids busy and they can learn something at the same time. Plus, there are several more virtual tours for you to check out on this post of the Best 25 Virtual Tours from Around the World.

Improve Your Photography Skills

Another fun thing to do at home is to improve your photography skills. Practicing with your camera each day only leads to better photographs. If you are looking for photo tips, you can sign up for their newsletters on these sites: Photo Concentrate, Shutter Muse, and Jared Lloyd Photo. And if you are looking for some ideas for photography gear, check out this post on the ultimate gift list for photographers.

Learn How to Detect Lies

Have you ever wondered when you were talking with someone if they were telling the truth? Well, you can figure it out now. This website tells you how to detect lies with understanding body language, reactions, and speech patterns. What a great thing to do while you are at home. Nobody will know that you have this amazing skill and you can put it to work on your family and friends. Honest!

Watch a Documentary

If you like to learn about things by seeing it instead of reading about it, check out Documentary Heaven. They have a top 100 list if you don’t know where to start or you can just type in something to search for it. You can find documentaries on 9/11, archaeology, art, biographies, crime, conspiracies, and more. What will you watch first?

Learn How to Do Magic Tricks

I don’t know about you, but I have always been fascinated with magic tricks growing up. To the point that I wanted to figure out how they did the tricks when I saw someone performing them. If you are interested in learning how to do magic tricks, check out this magic trick website. They offer free magic tricks and even pro magic secrets and tips. Do you have your top hat and magic cape ready?

Work on Puzzles

More fun things to do at home include spending time with each other working on puzzles. This has always been a source of fun at my home when we were younger. The tougher the puzzle the better. My sisters and I would fight to be the one to get the edges done first since that was the easiest to figure out. Amazon has several puzzles you can choose from especially ones depicting your favorite travel destinations like Santorini above.

Listen to Podcasts

A great way to help you get through the boredom by staying home or doing chores is to listen to podcasts. Here are some wonderful travel podcasts if you are interested: The Radio Vagabond: travel podcast from every country in the world; Gal Pal Show: Solo Female Travel; Women Who Travel; Travel Like A Boss; and Travel Disasters.

Museum of Endangered Sounds

These next few sections are something that I recently found and they are super interesting, such as the Museum of Endangered Sounds. The site preserves the sounds made famous by old technologies and electronic equipment. How many of you can still remember what the AOL startup sounded like, or the sound of a VHS tape being sucked in the player? This site does a wonderful job of bringing these sounds to life again along with all the memories of a long-forgotten time.

Sketch Something Daily

I love drawing and painting, so finding the Sketch Something Daily website is amazing to me. I hope that you guys get a kick out of it as well. You can upload a sketch every day and people can vote if they like it or not. It is you against the world. Nice competitive game and if it gets you drawing even better.

Gross Science Show

Okay, this is something cool and as a science nerd, I love. The Gross Science Show is a youtube channel that delves into the gross, slimy, creepy, and smelly things that you have always wondered about. For example, Why does cheese smell like feet? Can poop cure an infection? What really causes cavities? and more unbelievable videos for you to say “OMG, I didn’t know that!”

Create a Photo Album

If you have some time, you can take all your photos from your previous trips and create a photo album. There are several places to help you make your memories last forever. You can upload your photos to Shutterfly and make a digital album. Other companies offering digital photobooks are Mixbook, Blurb, and Flippingbook.

Explore Google Street View

Do you still need more fun things to do at home? Exploring Google Street View offers you interactive panoramas of streets around the world. Google Street View captures more than 10 million miles of Street View imagery across 83 countries. You can explore Paris, Turkey, and the Grand Canyon from the comfort of your own computer screen. This is a fabulous way to take a trip virtually and get your travel fix while you are staying at home.

Summary

Staying at home for a length of time can be challenging for some people, especially if you don’t have something like a trip planned in the future. But there are plenty of ways to keep you and your family occupied while you are staying at home. Some of these ideas can even help you with the travel fix that you are missing. I hope you enjoyed this list of fun things to do at home. If you have a great idea that I should add to this list, let me know in the comments. Have fun and Stay Occupied!

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Further Reading

If you need other ideas on what to do at home, check out these posts for further inspiration:

• The 20 Best Virtual Museums Around The World
• National Plan for Vacation Day – Where Will it Take You?
• The 25 Best Virtual Tours from Around the World
• The Best Food by Country that I’ve Tasted