Become a Junior Ranger Online

The National Parks Service in the United States has a cool program called the Junior Rangers, where kids can complete activities and learn about the parks they visit and earn a patch or a passport stamp.

While kids are at home, the service has collected all the Junior Ranger activities that can be completed remotely. Kids can become Junior Suffragists by exploring the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality Monument online, or learn about protecting the Great Lakes to become a Junior Ranger of the Great Lakes (perfect for Earth Day!) among many other opportunities.

There are even some experiences that are not tied to specific sites, like this one for Junior Rangers in space. These will be fun for kids to explore on their own or learn along with you. Being a Junior Ranger has no age limit!

[Photo: National Parks Service.]

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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