If there are "pick your own" operations near you for seasonal foods - think apples, pumpkins, peaches, strawberries, etc. Take them picking with you. My granddaughter is 11, lives across the country, only gets to visit a couple of times a year, and will be visiting in October. She is excited about going to pick apples. Me too!! We went to a farm and picked strawberries back in the spring. Great fun and then home to cook up something with the "pickings".
My granddaughter is a crafter like me and is into most anything I do. She is also a pretty good cook and is always looking for something for us to cook. We have a lot of fun just preparing meals. In fact some days, I am grateful for the tablet or tv.... It gives me a chance to slow down and rest for a minute. She keeps me hopping!!!

There are things like the Boy Scout handbook that have activities that would earn the scout a badge. Some involve going somewhere to learn something new. You can collect insects, study plant structure, learn first aid, tour a fire station. They might go kicking and screaming, but the experience is invaluable.

Anniedeb; I like the idea of looking at photo of family. If we want our heritage passed on then we need to do the passing.

I also do jigsaw puzzles with my grands and lots of games too. Checkers, Chines checkers, Sequence and Monopoly are favorites. Not so very long ago, I pulled out a massive bag of dominoes and let them build with them. After a time of lining up dominoes in paths all around my dining room table. One grandson grabbed his i-Pad and began to shoot a video and the other pushed the first domino and the fun began. Kept them busy for quite a while.

Another thing I do is to create traditions. For me, the three local grands come and help me decorate the tree and we make pizza together for dinner. After three years, they are already talking about here we will put the tree this year! Have fun with them.

Although my grands don’t live close I do see them regularly and have spent a lot of time with them - either here or at their house. I have always taken my lead from them from when they were small and wanted to cuddle and then read or play with toys or a game to now the two older ones are mostly grown and the youngest who is taller than me still likes to just be with me. We talk or watch a YouTube video - he likes to bake simple things so I have supplies. There have been outings etc but not the main goal. That has worked for us.

I had a very nice afternoon with my 12 year old grand-twins yesterday. I took them to the cemetery where my grandmother and family were buried. We found the headstone for the namesake of their mother, then began to search for traditional cemetery art, and searched for the oldest headstone, 1798. We had fun connecting dates with historical events, like the civil war, the 1918 pandemic, War of 1812, WWI and WWII and calculating the age of the individuals being commemorated. Good time for all and did not cost anything but our time.

My Grands are 34 - 19 so they entertain themselves. Two Great Grands that live in this area are 1-1/2 and almost two and very good at entertaining themselves, most of the time.