Governors across the country have ordered many of us to stay home.
Shout out to the health care workers, grocery store workers, restaurant workers, cleaning and sanitation workers, truck drivers, military personnel, journalists, and everyone else on the front lines. Thank you for your service!
Personally, to pass the unexpected free time, I’ve cleaned out closets and cupboards, taken walks, spent way too much time on social media, baked, cooked, and eaten way too many snacks. I could use some free ideas to do during the quarantine and to keep boredom at bay.
In fact, I was streaming the Pacific Coral Reef at the National Aquarium while I was cleaning my kitchen. I found the live stream had a very calming effect on my anxiety.
Listed below, you’ll find some free ideas to help you get through the quarantine. They range from educational live streams, free trials to virtual tours and free food. As I find more ideas, I’ll update this list. Also, if you know of something, please post in the comments.
FREE Things to Do During the Quarantine!
Subscriptions and Trials:
Audible is offering free streaming of stories for as long as kids are off of school. The list is impressive and is a mix of education, entertainment, and general-interest titles. No credit card is required.
Are you a member of Amazon Prime? Kindle Unlimited has always offered a 30-day free trial. Unlimited reading. Unlimited listening. Any device. Your credit card will be charged at the end of the trial.
Museums & Aquariums:
The Metropolitan Opera is offering free live streaming. Each day, a different encore presentation from the company’s Live in HD series is being made available for free streaming on the Met website, with each performance available for a period of 23 hours, from 7:30 p.m. EDT until 6:30 p.m. the following day. The schedule will include outstanding complete performances from the past 14 years of cinema transmissions, starring all of the opera’s greatest singers. The performances are being made available through the Met Opera on Demand streaming service, and are also accessible through Met Opera on Demand apps on all of your favorite devices.
Broadway HD, a streaming service for theater fans, is offering a 7 day free trial of its library of over 300 Broadway productions. A credit card is required, so after the free trial, the monthly fee is only $8.99 a month kicks in. Be sure to cancel if you don’t want to go forward with the subscription.
The National Aquarium is closed, but their exhibit live streams are still going on. You can watch the aquarium from home. The exhibits include Blacktip Reef, Pacific Coral Reef, Jellies Invasion.
The Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium is closed but bringing the zoo into your home through webcams and podcasts. Check out the Penguin and Cheetah webcams.
Take a virtual tour of Yosemite National Park in California. You’ll experience over 200 different locations within Yosemite and its surrounding areas, in all seasons. This is a very cool website and I’ve added Yosemite to my in real life bucket list.
Here’s a list of 12 Pennsylvania Museums that are offering virtual tours. These educational tours include arts, trains, sports, American history, and more.
Classes:
Class Central is offering 495 FREE online Ivy League courses. Including the very popular, The Science of Well-Being, from Yale University.
BandLab for Schools is open for students, teachers, and parents. This starter songwriter course is now FREE during the crisis.
Food:
If you’re up for a drive through, from Monday, March 23 – April 6, Burger King is giving away 2 free kids meals for every adult meal, while supplies last. The food must be ordered online or through Burger King’s mobile-phone app and the offer is available at participating locations.
This list is will be updated as I find new freebies! Share any freebies that you know of in the comments.
