My parents have spanish flash cards that my 5 yo daughter loves to do with them.

Tea parties and dance parties. That is almost all my 2.5 yo does on Skype.

I do this with my son and my mom often! He loves it. They mostly read books, though sometimes they show each other things (flowers, vegetables she grows in her garden). My son goofs off and shows her his feet over and over too

I agree with getting the same books so they can follow along together.

Talk

We usually just sing, read books, or chat, but a couple of weeks ago, we cooked "with" my mom over FaceTime! DS and I wanted to make a traditional dish for Passover, and since my mom is an expert, we all did it together without a recipe. It was like "Mom-Mom's Cooking Show" and we're definitely going to do it again sometime!

Play charades!

I'd do show and tell - and grandparents can do it, too - look at the new flowers we planted, the bread we baked, etc - althopugh obviously less often than the child doing it. What about if your parents read a chapter book out loud, a chapter a night? There aren't any pictures, so it's great for just listening - and occasionally asking a question or discussing something that is confusing.

My Father's Dragon would be a good one if your family has never read a chapter a night kind of book. Otherwise, there are other longer books that would work, too. Could read 2 chapters if there is time!

Can you use a program like gotomypc so they can share control of the screen and play games like tic tac toe or on screen coloring etc?

Mad libs! Just started doing these with my 5 year old and he thinks they are hysterical.

I would do something like "show and tell." If she made artwork that week or has a special toy that she likes to talk about.

We bought a few sets of books and had grandparents read them while our child flipped through the book in their lap. Grandparents held up the book as they read, so they had verbal and visual cues. Maybe for that age some of the Early Reader books and then they could sound out words/letters and identify sight words together?

My DD likes to sing songs with people over facetime. She's only 2.5, I dunno if that would appeal to a 5yo.

Maybe she could show off some of her artwork?

good question. we facetime with the grandparents often with our under-2 DD. They read books, and lately DD is starting to recognize some letters so they occasionally hold up bananagrams tiles and do a sort of flash card thing. I have to imagine you could play most any board game. Maybe a few card games too, like war?

Great question. I do this with my 3 yr old sometimes too and will be interested in the responses.

My DH travels a lot, and my 5-year-old will often FaceTime with my mom in Florida while I get the baby to bed. They both enjoy it, and it's basically long-distance babysitting for me . Of course, 5-year-olds are not always the most brilliant conversationalists, so I'm trying to think of some games/activities they can do together over FaceTime. I've had them read to each other and that works pretty well, but I'd love some more suggestions. We'd be happy to buy an extra game set or couple of books or whatever if that would make it work better. Thanks for any thoughts!