Home exercise and entertainment

Exercise

On Sunday, 10th May, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, laid out the first steps for easing England out of lockdown. But what are the new rules on exercise and what do they mean for you?

What are the new rules when it comes to exercise in the UK?

It’s important to note that the rules around exercise are different in the four countries that make up the UK. According to the guidelines published on Monday, 11th May, from Wednesday, 13th May, runners in England can:

• Exercise alone or with members of their household as many times a day as you might wish. According to the guidelines, you should still only exercise with up to one member of your household – this means you should not play team sports with anyone who is not a member of your household.
• Drive somewhere to exercise as long as you are with members of your household. This does not apply to all areas of the UK – it is important to respect the rules in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
• Runners should still abide by social-distancing rules and stay two metres apart, but can exercise or sit in the park or other public spaces with someone from another household.
• You can still not use playgrounds, outdoor gyms or outdoor leisure venues, where there is a higher risk of close contact and touching surfaces.

If you're currently stuck at home, you may be feeling demoralised about what this will mean for your fitness. Whether you were training for a marathon (which has subsequently been cancelled) or enjoy working out at the gym (which has been closed until further notice), it can be tough to think of putting your usual routine on hold.

Click here for more informatiom how to exercise at home in isolation.

The 'Green Goddess' returns with self-isolation fitness tips

Resident of Spelthorne, 1980's fitness star Diana Moran, better known as the Green Goddess, has returned to our screens with her tips on how to keep fit and stay healthy during self-isolation.

Entertainment

Weird and wonderful ways to get through the Covid-19 lockdown (https://www.theguardian.com/)

As the coronavirus crisis deepens and the advice is to stay at home, people are becoming increasingly creative about how to cope. Here are just some of the ways people are trying to deal with social distancing.

• The House party video messaging app, which basically allows you to throw parties with your friends, is becoming hugely popular again.

Launched in 2016 downloads are rocketing. The app allows you to video call up to eight people and do something important, like play Pictionary. Or have a virtual dinner party where everyone does the cooking.

• You can’t go to your local for the pub quiz, so Edinburgh-based Goose’s Quizzes are staging nightly pub quizzes at 7pm. Just form a virtual team, download the form, answer the questions and the winner will be announced the next day. Why not have a drink too?

Organisers have asked teams to be be inventive with names. There’s too much “QuaranTinaTurner” and “Quizteam Aguilera”, they say. And obviously don’t cheat – give Google a break!

• The lockdown is allowing us to get closer to celebrities than ever before. The rich and famous too are staying at home and giving us a glimpse in to their world.

Broadway diva Patti Lupone for example has given a tour of her surprising basement, showing off her juke box, one-armed bandit and pinball machine. Ellen DeGeneres complains her table isn’t big enough for a 4,000 piece jigsaw. Arnold Schwarzenegger feeds his miniature horses indoors.

Over at Patrick Stewart’s house the actor is, wonderfully, reading Shakespeare’s sonnets. On Twitter he explains: “When I was a child in the 1940s, my mother would cut up slices of fruit for me (there wasn’t much) and as she put it in front of me she would say: ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ How about: ‘A sonnet a day keeps the doctor away?’ So...here we go: Sonnet 1.”

• What is the point of watching a movie if you’re not dressed up as a character? The Irish comedian Alison Spittle is hosting covideo parties where everyone watches the same film on Netflix at 9pm. The dress code for Groundhog Day was “forever winter”.

For Hook it was a more challenging “child killing sea captain but make it fashion”.

• It’s not weird but it could well be wonderful. London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts is encouraging people to listen to some of the 900 talks and discussions which were staged at the ICA between 1982 and 1993.

They are available on the British Library’s Sounds website and include Ken Campbell (fondly described in his Guardian obituary as “one of the strangest people in Britain”) interviewing Derek Jarman; a rare chance to hear the playwright Caryl Phillips in conversation, notably with Graham Swift; and the surprising opportunity to hear Jonathan Aitken and Enoch Powell give their views on secrecy and the state.

28 Free or Cheap Ways to Entertain Yourself at Home

Sometimes we find ourselves trapped in our homes, completely at a loss for how to use our time. Maybe we feel that we have too many options to even begin to pin one down, or maybe we feel that we have too few due to a lack of time or resources. The fact of the matter is there are a great many number of ways we can entertain ourselves at home for free or on a budget. Having fun does not necessarily mean forking over tons of money. Here are is a creative list of ideas for you have a good time without leaving your house.

1. Watch a program on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc.
2. Read a new book. Half of the fun of reading a new book is finding it. eReaders are a great resource for browsing scores of contemporary titles, as well as free classics, such as Tales of the Brothers Grimm.
3. Reread an old book.
4. Watch YouTube animal videos.
5. Exercise (It’s free and it’s good for you).
6. Turn to Pinterest for D.I.Y. and inspired upcycling ideas.
7. Play your favourite music and get up and dance. Tom Cruise did it in Risky Business.
8. Write reviews for your Amazon purchases. It’s oddly addictive to do and helps your fellow buyers.
9. Write a poem. Turn to the internet for how to write haikus, limericks, ballads and more.
10. Draw, if you are artistically inclined.
11. Take some photographs around the house or of the world outside your window using either a stand-alone camera, or the one built into your phone.
12. Skype or Face Time with someone you don’t normally see.
13. Start an Instagram or Twitter for your pet.
14. Try out a new cocktail recipe with ingredients around the house.
15. Bake some cookies.
16. Create your own nut butter, be it almond, peanut, or walnut. Get creative!
17. Create your own pesto with a fresh green (basil, spinach, arugula, etc.), olive oil, your nut of choice, fresh parmesan, and salt and pepper.
18. Make a collage with magazines and newspapers sitting around the house. Frame and hang it for cheap, D.I.Y. wall art.
19. If you know an instrument, play it.
20. Go window shopping online. It’s like window shopping at the mall, but the multiple checkout steps are a deterrent for actually buying anything.
21. Make a sock puppet with an old sock and odds and ends around the house.
22. Brew and enjoy a cup of coffee or tea. Take time to savour the beverage, and pick out flavour notes.
23. Run diagnostic, clean up, and maintenance tasks on your computer, such as running an antivirus software and making sure your computer is completely up to date.
24. Collect clothing and non-perishable food items you no longer want for donation. This idea is double duty: You are giving to those in need and de-cluttering your home.
25. Take online quizzes on websites like Buzzfeed.com.
26. Explore your phone or tablet’s app store and make use of free apps.
27. Create a blog on a website such as blogger.com or wordpress.com.
28. Organize a cluttered area of your house, such as your closet or your junk drawers. It’s cathartic and sometimes fun going through your belongings and paring down to only those that you need and use.

This is a solid list to get you started. Entertaining yourself sometimes takes loads of creativity. Next time you are bored, take a look around your space and find something you haven’t used for a while, or something that needs to be organized and get to work. And with a plethora of free and cheap entertainment options on the internet, there is no end to the ways to entertain yourself at home.

With schools and offices shutting, we’ve got a handy guide to keeping the kids happy whilst staying at home.

We’ve got an amazing collection of printable activities and games for you to keep the family busy, including printable Julia Donaldson activity sheets and online resources to help keep learning alive.

Click here for more information10 ways to keep the kids entertained through COVID-19

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