Short breaks at home
Our short breaks at home section was originally set up as a response to the first Coronavirus lockdown in 2020 as a way to help carers and their families have some time-out from their caring routines while other supports may not be available.
But we know that for many carers being able to have a short break at home – a chance to have some time to themselves in a busy day – can really help their own health and wellbeing so we’ll continue to pull together a collection of ideas, resources and activities that can help everyone have a little time out without leaving home.
Short breaks at home
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a library of over 70,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. You will find the world’s great literature here, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Thousands of volunteers digitized and diligently proofread the eBooks, for enjoyment and education.
Online book clubs
There are some options for bookclubs online.
The Guardian Reading Group
E-books from Hive
If you don’t have a kindle then you can download e-books to an alternative device, such as your phone using the Hive website. Hive also supports independent bookshops, helping to sustain them during these strange times.
Savidge reads – Simon Savidge’s YouTube channel on books
Simon Savidge describes himself as a bookish bear and has a fantastic YouTube channel dedicated to talking about books including new releases, recommendations and discussions with authors. His Twitter and Instagram streams are also worth following for lots of book chat!
Glasgow Improvement Challenge, Read Write Count
Glasgow Improvement Challenge has read-alongs and lots of items from Read Write Count
Reese Witherspoon online bookgroup
Actress Reese Witherspoon is an avid reader who hosts an online bookgroup, follow for recommendations and book chat!
“i’m a puzzle” – FREE online jigsaw puzzles from
Puzzles are excellent for destressing and improving cognitive and logical thinking skills while having fun.
This website allows you to play and create jigsawsfrom any image online.
Complex Additional Support Needs
Resources for learning at home and guidance for parentsEducation Scotland and a small group of Head Teachers have pulled together a bank of ‘parent friendly’ home learning resources and support for parents of children with complex additional support needs. Please note this is a work in progress and will continue to be updated.
Schools can direct parents to specific resources as part of their planned learning programme or parents can directly access the resources for use at any time, for example, during periods of absence.
Sense Scotland – Home activities
These resources have been inspired by the people we support. Thank you for giving us these ideas and teaching us just what we are all capable of when it comes to communicating with each other. We have also included resources from other organisations.
This section is designed to give you a wealth of activities and ideas to encourage you and the ones you love to ‘Be Well, Be Creative and Be Playful’.
Free online android games – Android Authority
15 best free Android games available right now!
Flamingo Chicks – Virtual Dance, Movement Classes and Activities
Flamingo Chicks is an inclusive community giving all children, including disabled children and those with illnesses such as cancer, the opportunity to enjoy dance and explore movement alongside friends.
Identify a bird – RSPB
The RSPB bird identifier lists 408 species of birds found in the UK, including some rare overseas visitors.
Phonics Play
Free interactive phonics games
Edinburgh Zoo LIVE cams
Edinburgh Zoo’s LIVE feed cameras can help you watch amazing animals including pandas, koalas and penguins!
Free Educational Content in Minecraft Marketplace
If you head over to the Minecraft Marketplace, you will find some of our favorite lessons from Minecraft: Education Edition in a brand new Education category. These educational worlds can be played on your own, with your kids, parents or friends. From the comfort of your home, you can tour the International Space Station or even explore the inside of a human eye. We’ve also included ten worlds from our Marketplace creator community! Thanks to creators Everbloom, Jigarbov, Lifeboat, Razzleberries, The World Foundry, Blockworks, and Imagiverse you can explore renewable energy, marine biology, Greek history, and more! The worlds include lesson plans like creative writing activities, build challenges, and tricky puzzles. Free to download through June 30, 2020.
Smart School House – Fun creative ideas for kids
Amazing Ideas for Kids to Try – fun, easy, and creative DIY’s for kids. From home made paint and silly putty to a cardboard igloo!!
RA: make a recycled sculpture
The Royal Academy encourages you to create a sustainable sculpture from reusable household rubbish. Build it, play around with decoration and then recycle the parts.
Sign with Layla Cooke
Fife teenager Layla teaches BSL signs on her YouTube Channel.
Why not see what signs you can learn over the next few weeks?
Glasgow Science Centre daily
The Glasgow Science Centre is bringing science into your own home with daily experiments. You can join in on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram as well as on their YouTube Channel.
Glasgow Improvement Challenge, Read Write Count
Glasgow Improvement Challenge has read-alongs and lots of items from Read Write Count
Fun brain
Fun brain has lots of activities for children available online, all sorted by school level.
National Geographic kids
National Geographic has a specific kids site
Free education subscriptions
A number of education companies are offering free subscriptions. Find the full list here
Home Baking Recipes
Paul Hollywood recipes and basic baking tips
Mary Berry’s website has lots of scrummy things to bake, and also a section with Great British Bake-off Recipes !
Stay Home, Get Cooking - BBC Good Food
Stay home, get cooking – Find recipe inspiration, fun activities and other ways to cope with being at home here.
Sense Scotland – Home activities
These resources have been inspired by the people we support. Thank you for giving us these ideas and teaching us just what we are all capable of when it comes to communicating with each other. We have also included resources from other organisations.
This section is designed to give you a wealth of activities and ideas to encourage you and the ones you love to ‘Be Well, Be Creative and Be Playful’ during this time when we are being asked to stay at home.
Virtual Village Hall – Royal Voluntary Service
The Virtual Village Hall is a programme of themed online activities designed to enjoy at home, brought to you by Royal Voluntary Service and supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
You’ll find a wide range of sessions to take part in, like creative arts and crafts, music and singing, cooking and baking, dance and exercise, and technology skills. Join in with live sessions or catch up on demand when suits it you.
Google Arts and Culture – Over 2,000 museums at your fingertips
Discover art from over 80 countries, with virtual museums and quizzes, and check out lots of cool stuff available for free when you download the phone app – Google Art & Culture
Grow your own – RHS
Royal Horticultural Society – Nothing beats the taste of fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs grown in your own garden – or the satisfaction and enjoyment you can get from doing it. Not sure what to grow or where to start? Click the link for all the tips and advice you need.
Pandemic Gardening – The National Gardening Association US
Some fantastic resources here including Gardening for Children, Beginners Guide to Gardening, and a selection of some helpful audio podcasts.
This is a US site, so bear this in mind when browsing.
Monty Don (Gardener)
Gardener, writer, broadcaster, farmer. Stunning photographs, and gardening tips on Instagram.
Smart School House
Fun creative ideas for kids to Try – fun, easy, and creative DIY’s for kids. From home made paint and silly putty to a cardboard igloo!!
RA: make a recycled sculpture :)
The Royal Academy encourages you to create a sustainable sculpture from reusable household rubbish. Build it, play around with decoration and then recycle the parts.
Scenesaver – Have a night at the theatre, from your sofa!
The online hub to watch 350+ performances from offwestend and fringe theatres from all around the world.
Free theatre streaming site Scenesaver offers a catalogue of over 350 pre-recorded shows from across the world.
You’ll need to register to watch, but it’s totally free.
Scottish Ballet – Tea Party Performances
I hope you are all keeping cosy today? It’s a bit dreich so if you are stuck indoors then if you pop over to our youtube page you will find the back log of tea party performances and also backstage talks etc that might be of interest to you.
Google Arts and Culture – Over 2,000 museums at your fingertips
Discover art from over 80 countries, with virtual museums and quizzes, and check out lots of cool stuff available for free when you download the phone app – Google Art & Culture
Art Galleries – Virtual Viewing Rooms
In 2017, having realized how much business the gallery did through online previews before art fairs, the dealer David Zwirner decided to develop ‘virtual viewing rooms’.
You don’t have to buy art to look at the viewing rooms 🙂
National Theatre At Home – quizzes, crafts & drama activities
Get creative. Get competitive. Get active. Here’s where you’ll find our quizzes, hosted by some familiar faces. Plus, there’s craft and drama activities
Visit London webcam
Visit London from the comfort of your own home through the Visit London webcam.
Shetland Museum webcam
Many Museums services have their own live webcams for example Shetland. You can enjoy the harbour from the warmth of your own couch!
Museum colouring books
Museums from around the world, 113 in total, have shared their colouring books online through this open source website.
Access the Virtual Museum of New France online
12 museums to visit online
A list of 12 ‘world class’ museums you can visit online
The National Museum of Computing
Anyone can now have a 3D virtual tour of two early computing galleries at The National Museum of Computing on Bletchley Park thanks to the 3D, 360-degree photography application developed by Venue View Virtual Tours.
US Museums online
This is a lengthy blog about how museums share their collections – but within it are many links to interesting US Museums.
Puzzle Garage
On and offline puzzle website
Best open source games
Best open source games – from Slant, a product recommendation community with the goal of making it effortless to find the best apps or games for you.
Free online android games – Android Authority
15 best free Android games available right now!
Lichess.org – Free online chess
lichess.org is a free/libre, open-source chess server powered by volunteers and donations.
Free Online Jigsaw Puzzles
OnlineJigsawPuzzles.net offers online jigsaw puzzles, free to play. Playing with jigsaws online help people to learn mouse control, it’s educational and good fun.
Free Resources for the Elderly
Useful free resources for carers of the elderly. You need to sign up to receive these
Phonics Play
Free interactive phonics games
Crosswords and Puzzles
Crosswords: many national newspapers now have online crosswords where you can fill in the clues electronically rather than having to print the crossword off. Here are some to try:
If you enjoy doing crosswords a lot, you might also like to think about paying for a puzzle book subscription. You can find lots of options online and you might be able to use a Time to Live small grant to get started.
Hobbylark – Word based parlour games
For word-based game inspiration visit the website.
Heads Up
The traditional game has been given a modern twist with a free app. Take turns to describe the item to the person holding the card/phone without mentioning the word. Great for all ages.
Drive and Listen
Drive & Listen, a new app by student Erkam Şeker, allows anyone to take a virtual drive around one of the app’s 38 available cities, taking in the sights and sounds of the street as well as local radio stations.
Musicares
We provide FREE music-making opportunities and advice, mentoring, and tutoring for young people in Scotland age 5 and upwards. We run the first national music project for care experienced young people in Scotland.
MUSIXHUB
The Musixhub platform lets you watch videos and play music from your favorite artists, full albums, latest videos, interviews, live performances and more.
Share a Spotify playlist !
We have a Shared Care Scotland Spotify playlist that the whole team contribute to, quite a mixture of tracks!!
A great suggestion from Don, our CEO, is to share a Spotify playlist with friends and family to cheer up their day 🙂
Desert Island Discs
Amanda, our Short Breaks Fund Grants Officer has kindly suggested one of her favourites – Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4. Eight tracks, a book and a luxury: what would you take to a desert island? Guests share the soundtrack of their lives.
Movie night
Take your time time to choose that perfect movie, sit down with popcorn (homemade if that’s your choice or store bought for ease!).
Big Thank You to Yasmin from The Butterfly Trust for sending us some cool offline suggestions like this one.
Baking Time
Baking – choose a recipe, either a favourite one or put a few different ones in a hat and pick out a surprise one!
Home Spa Day
Home Spa day – Special bubble bath, a nice exfoliation/ face mask, dimmed lights, essential oils/ incense burning.
Photo Albums
Make a nice cup of coffee and sit down and sort out all those photos you have been meaning to compile into an album. Old family paper prints, or online pics are much nicer to look through in an album, and will bring back lots of nice memories too. You will find online apps for creating printed photobooks that you could send to friends and family to cheer them up
Crafting Hour (or 2)
Set a clock and get to crafting, whether it’s a crochet or knitting project that needs completing (or starting), a painting that you want to do, upcycling some furniture or using a colouring book to let your mind wander.
EXCEL EASY. FREE Excel tutorials
National Careers Service – free online learning courses
The Skills Toolkit – Free courses to help you learn new skills or get a new job.
AbilityNet
AbilityNet’s Tech volunteers provide free IT support to older people and disabled people of any age, anywhere in the UK. Every volunteer is disclosure-checked and can help with all sorts of IT (information technology) challenges, from setting up new equipment, fixing technical issues, showing you how to stay connected to family, using online services and much more.
Learn to make web pages – W3schools.com
THE WORLD’S LARGEST WEB DEVELOPER SITE
Wikiversity
Wikiversity is for learning. It is a place where you’ll find free, multilingual learning materials and learning projects. Everyone can participate. There is no cost, no advertising, and no credentials required. No degrees are awarded — just learning.
My World of Work Free Online Courses
Are you a furloughed worker or want to develop your skills? Online courses are a convenient and flexible way to learn.
Duolingo – Learn a new language
Learning a new language with Duolingo is fun and addictive. Earn points for correct answers, race against the clock, and level up.
600 Free Online Courses
Since the end of 2011 over 800 universities have created around 10,000 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). In the past four months alone, 190 universities have announced 600 such free online courses.
TedX Glasgow
Ted Talks are also a great way of learning online. You can find the full set from TedX Glasgow here.
Free Open University courses
At the forefront of distance learning has always been the Open University. You can find their full catalogue of free courses here .
Edinburgh University free online courses
Edinburgh University has a number of free online courses available. These can be accessed here.
On Being podcast
On Being Covering the big questions in life, the On Being podcast is a series of conversations covering, philosophy, faith, life. It’s always fascinating and well presented.
Desert Island Discs podcast
Amanda Moffat, our Short Breaks Fund grants officer loves to listen to the Desert Island discs podcast. “My favourite episode ever is the one with Martina Cole, the author, and I listen to that one often. I find the podcasts just long enough to just give me some time to myself and relax!”
Find your favourites here
SuperSoul Conversations
Our Communications Manager Kate Hogarth is a big fan of Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul Conversations. They are described as ” interviews with thought-leaders, best-selling authors, spiritual luminaries, as well as health and wellness experts. All designed to light you up, guide you through life’s big questions and help bring you one step closer to your best self.”
Night Sky Watching
Thank you to Ruth at care4cares for suggesting these cool astronomy apps
Some Night Sky watching options for carers (or anyone) to do over the coming weeks. If you have a pair of binoculars you can see a lot!
Download the Astronomy apps and watch and connect to the community. We are all looking up at the same sky, no matter where we are. Carers have told us that it is a coping strategy they use, and we are hoping to encourage more carers to do this.
Apple:
SkySafari – £2.99 (sometimes on offer for free)
Stellarium Mobile – Free
Android:
Stellarium Mobile – from Free
SkySafari – £2.99 (sometimes on offer for free)
Desktop / Laptop:
Stellarium – Free
Wildflowers of Britain – Countrylife
A simple guide to Britain’s beautiful wildflowers.
Edinburgh Zoo LIVE cams
Edinburgh Zoo’s LIVE feed cameras can help you watch amazing animals including pandas, koalas and penguins!
Glasgow Science Centre daily
The Glasgow Science Centre is bringing science into your own home with daily experiments. You can join in on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram as well as on their YouTube Channel.
National Geographic kids
National Geographic has a specific kids site
NASA image library
NASA have made their entire image library available online free!
Barbend.com – Bodyweight Workouts
Barbend.com have kindly shared their bodyweight workout resource that highlights six bodyweight-only workouts for your training needs during your quick breaks.
NHS – Live well
Advice, tips and tools to help you make the best choices about your health and wellbeing.
Movement for Memories – Edinburgh Leisure
We offer our online services which include 1 to 1 physical activity sessions through Zoom to help you improve your fitness, strength, and balance but to also have that friendly face from the Movement for Memories team to encourage you with your activities. We will also have our NEW online classes if you prefer to do a class, which will start mid-January and will again be on Zoom. The classes that we will be delivering are – Active Sit, Strength & Cardio, and Strength & Balance.
If you are interested in any of these services and would like to self-refer yourself then please email – active@edinburghleisure.co.uk or phone 0131 458 2260
Sporting Memories – Online Club
Our online sporting memories clubs have replaced our physical clubs for the time being. Meeting each week for an hour and half the online clubs provide social and physical activities where everyone can have fun, make friends with the aim of supporting each other. Many of the adults who come to our clubs welcome the weekly company as they have become isolated within their community or are living with low mood, dementia or other long-term conditions.
Kayla Itsines Workout App (SWEAT) – 4 weeks free
Kayla Itsines Workout App, SWEAT, is Free for 4 Weeks to New Members. If you’ve ever wanted to try it, now’s your chance.
Free yoga with Adriene
Yoga with Adriene has an incredible 6.3million followers on YouTube, and for good reason. The classes are free and cater to all different levels from beginner to the more experienced. There are also some short meditation sessions.
Free workouts with the Body Coach
Joe Wicks, otherwise known as the Body Coach has free workouts available on his YouTube channel. This include free daily workouts for kids as an alternative to gym classes!