Hoping to help people stay healthy and entertained while they’re sheltering at home, an eastern Iowa community is unveiling what it’s calling a “virtual recreation resource center.” Kelsie Stafford, program supervisor for Muscatine Parks and Recreation, got the idea from a city in California and tailored it for her city and the Midwest. It features suggestions for oodles of indoor activities, including virtual field trips.

“So you can go and click that link and there’s a huge list of all these different museums and zoos, aquariums that have live cams, and tours of their facilities,” Stafford says. “So I think that’s really neat for kids or families to sit at their computer and travel all over the United States and the world.” The virtual resource center also focuses on encouraging people to be physically active and engaged, through things like a nature scavenger hunt or a backyard Olympics.

“For me, it’s hard to get the motivation to figure out what I need to do to work out in my living room or my backyard,” she says. “This site has a bunch of different ideas and links to make it easy for people to just click and say ‘Oh, I can do that at home,’ or, ‘The kids and I can do that this afternoon.'” Stafford says the virtual resource center also features contests, with prizes, such as trying to identify landmarks in Muscatine.

https://www.muscatineiowa.gov/1407/Virtual-Recreation-Resource-Center