Quarantine Round-Up: Family Records from an Unusual Year

It is hard to believe it has been a year since last March when so much about our daily lives changed. It makes me think about the passage of time and how quickly it slips through your fingers. 

The other night as W and M erected a blanket fort as I prepared dinner, it occurred to me that they've never made so many forts before. Lately it feels like they make a fort almost every week-- so much so that Santa got them a second box of Crazy Forts connector pieces at Christmas time to help them build bigger and better structures! I'm sure we all have our own unique experiences, and, for better or worse, our kids will be telling their tales of this year their whole lives. 

Beyond the number of forts built, here are some other things that stand out for our family about this year.

This year definitely marked for us the least of some things:

• Number of times dining out in restaurants (0)-- we're a little extreme and haven't even had takeout in a YEAR. (We are literally preparing food and it is getting consumed All. The. Time.)
• Number of extended family gatherings.
• Trips or vacations.
• Mileage on our cars.
• Birthday parties.
• Camps, organized sports.

But also the most of a lot of things:

• Games and Legos played over video chat.
• Sibling bonding.
• Rusty brake rotors from disuse.
• Puzzles done. There is always one vying for space on our large-but-never-large-enough dining room table, and they seem to get bigger and bigger. 
• Online learning. We've enjoyed instrument lessons via Zoom, Tippi Toes dance classes, and the occasional Outschool class. 
• Virtual concerts watched. We tapped our toes to Hilary Hahn, Natalie MacMaster, and The Trans-Siberian Orchestra from the comfort of our living room.  
• Online trivia nights. We've seen a couple of groups of friends far more often than we would have in normal life, thanks to this. 
• Time spent together as a family.  
• Homemade bread and other new adventures in food (homemade yogurt, African peanut butter stew, homemade sushi, and sourdough: bread, pancakes and waffles, pizza dough, crumpets, biscuits, popovers...)
• Time spent with our dog (which is good because, in his old age he seems to need to go outside more and more times in a day).
• Songs from the Hamilton and Frozen soundtracks listened to, sung, and memorized.
• Connection with nature. We've always liked to be outside and bike and hike and ski, but this year we've forced buds, started seeds, tapped a tree, found and revisited frog eggs, played with milkweed, harvested and drawn on shelf fungi, followed deer and rabbit tracks, searched for antlers, tromped in wetlands, cracked ice sheets from the surface of the freshly frozen brook, studied worms and introduced them to our compost bin, and really gotten to know our own backyard more than ever before. 
• Popsicles consumed (we really got into afternoon popsicles outside as a treat from spring through fall and still have some stashed in our freezer since the warm days ceased).
• Groceries ordered online and delivered straight to my car. I've hardly set foot in a grocery store since July and it's amazing. 
• Skiing and skating and sledding and snowman building in a winter-- this year there is not much else to distract from those things during our weekends and free time.
• Sickness-free for our family personally, for which I feel extremely lucky and grateful. I find it amazing that not one of us has had so much as a sniffle in a year.

What are your standout mosts and leasts you will remember from this unusual year?

Ideas for Virtual Playdates

It's midwinter at the height of a pandemic, so, like many people, we're trying to avoid indoor gatherings-- which eliminates traditional playdates. That has been tough. 

Some may think that homeschoolers would be accustomed to limited socialization, but this school year has felt like night and day compared to (the first two-thirds of) last year. Last year we were new homeschoolers, and we were happy and relieved to find how connected the kids still felt. W attended PE twice a week at the school with his old classmates, and participated in every seasonal sport. We took one class for homeschoolers and did frequent after-school things like playdates and dance class. We were pleasantly busy; there were always people to see and places to go. 

The last few months, with none of that happening, is the first time I have worried about socialization and trying to keep my kids from feeling too isolated. 

We're lucky to be able to sometimes meet up outdoors with friends who like to cross-country ski or ice skate, but for the most part other than that, we've focused on finding ways for the kids to have fun with friends and family from home, via Zoom or FaceTime. Given the options right now, they love it. Especially on the days when morale is dragging, I've found it is amazing how much happier my kids are after spending an hour or more face-to-face with a friend, even if it isn't in person (which they frequently reminisce about, and look forward to doing again...). 

My biggest aha with my kids and video calls is that, while there are times we all want to sit down and share a family call, in general the kids do best with their peers when I just get them set up (if needed) and then let them be free to wander around the house and to do whatever they feel like, even if it doesn't seem that they are really doing any particular thing. That might mean two 5-year-olds just peek at each other through their empty Connect 4 boards and giggle. While I as the adult might feel inclined to step in and organize things for them, if they are happy and spending time with someone they like, that's what matters. Kids are amazingly flexible and adaptable and mine always seem to find a way to have fun one way or another when they are given the time and some friendly company on the other end.  

But there are times, on calls with grandparents or newer friends, where I've found it's nice to have a little more structure in the way of a game or activity, at least to get things started. To that end, here's our list of favorite activities for virtual playdates. I hope this list gives some ideas to other parents out there. What ideas have worked well for your family? Please share your other, no doubt better, ideas for getting kids together safely. I would be excited to get a comment :) and we would absolutely love to get more ideas.  

Our Favorite Activities (So Far) for Virtual Playdates

Games 

We don't do online video games (yet) in our house, and I know that's a way kids connect with one another from home these days. So far we've stuck with some old-school games we've found to work well over a video call. Many only require one of the players to actually have the game, while others require no special equipment.

• Guess Who-- Perfect over FaceTime; just make sure you both have the same version, which was an issue we ran into once...
• Battleship-- Another that is absolutely perfect for playing remotely, as the whole point is to hide your board and guess the other person's.
• Connect 4-- Some friends of ours taught us the trick of labeling the columns 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Then kids (of any age!) can play with anyone, even if their opponent doesn't own the game. The opponent just says which column number to drop their chip in when it's their turn. This one is good for a wide range of kids and for play with grandparents as well (and it's quick so you can play several rounds). M actually played recently for the first time with a friend who owned the game and it was honestly a little more confusing to have two boards and have to try to mirror/stay caught up with one another. We decided it's best for just one person to have the actual board set up on their end. (She also played with a different friend recently where they didn't play the actual game but both just ended up stacking their Connect 4 chips and comparing their walls/towers/patterns, so it's a multi-use game.) 
• Hangman-- Another good one with grandparents, and adaptable for multiple ages, by using simpler or harder words. 
• Charades-- We played recently in a group of adult cousins and our kids. It was really simple and fun, especially by googling a simple word generator like this one (with easy, medium, and hard levels to choose from) so that you didn't even have to first brainstorm words to act out, but can jump right in with playing. Teams do not all have to be located in the same house together to guess and act for one another which was fun, because there were more kids than adults so we decided to play adults vs. kids. (We had the kids' team use the "easy" words and the adult team use medium or hard words.) (My sister tells me Pictionary was fun this same way, using an online word generator, so we are looking forward to trying that, too.)
• Scattergories/Categories-- Choose several categories, and a letter of the alphabet. Set a timer for a certain amount of time. Everyone privately tries to think of and write down examples of each category beginning with the chosen letter. When time is up and answers are compared, you receive a point for any word that other players didn't also think of. Play several rounds with different letters of the alphabet and compare scores. Here is one description of how to play.    
• Yahtzee-- This is a great game, with a fun mix of chance and strategy. We've learned it can be played over FaceTime easily. We scanned the blank score sheet and emailed it to grandparents. As long as they have that and can find five dice in their house, they are good to go! 
• Board Game Arena-- We need to further explore this site that a friend introduced us to, but it seems great! It is a free way to be able to play a whole slew of traditional board games and card games online with friend. It provides the interface to play games that wouldn't otherwise work well over a video call. After 30 seconds to create an account on the site, W recently spent an hour playing a few rounds of Kingdomino over Zoom with a friend thousands of miles away and reported that "that was SO fun."  
• 20 Questions-- no materials needed. 
• Rubik's Race-- This may fall in the category of games W and his cousin found to play in the early days of quarantine that perhaps seem like less obvious choices to others but they made it work. It's a two-person game where both need to own the game in order to play it virtually. You quickly try to move the pieces around to be the first to make a specified arrangement. It's intense and fast-paced, so not a lot of chit chat on the side with this one. 

Other

Here are some other things, besides specific games or just chatting, that have been fun for the kids over video chat. 

• Impressions-- I once had the idea that I would get W and his homeschooled cousin together to talk about a book they had both read. I had question prompts ready and everything, but my lofty book discussion became a game of impressions. "Okay, okay, who am I now?..." one of them would say, as they acted out things specific characters from the book said or did (or the types of things these characters might have said and done based on their personalities) and the other guessed.  
• Dress up-- M enjoys doing this. The funny thing is, kids don't seem to mind abandoning each other for several minutes as they go change or retrieve a prop, and don't seem to mind waiting as the other does the same. It's not the same as being in the same room together, but it's amazing how naturally they do it and go with the flow of it all.
• Dolls-- Another of M's favorites. It's great when she has gotten a chance to play "Babies" with her cousin. They are on the same wavelength (in contrast to how the rest of this household secretly feels if M asks one of us to play babies with her) and they don't care whether they can see each other the whole time. They chatter at each other and occasionally stop to see or show something on the actual screen that they leave propped somewhere as they are happily engrossed with their own dolls in their own rooms while hearing each other's voices.   
• Show & Tell-- If there's an adult on the other end, especially one prone to motion sickness, they may get tired of kids running around the house carrying the iPad/phone while on a call. But kids love to show off their room, pet, or newest toy or creation, and seem genuinely interested in seeing each other's things as well.
• Legos-- This one doesn't seem like it would work well, but from the earliest days of quarantine, W and his cousin have contentedly built Legos together over Facetime. They'll hang out for long moments peacefully building in silence in each other's company, then they'll show things, or ask ideas and be totally engaged in it all. (One of the sweetest things I overheard was when W and his cousin made the (questionable) plan to each build half a boat out of Legos and to put it together when they can get together again.) They seem so focused and satisfied doing Legos over FaceTime, approximating one of the most natural pastimes they'd be doing if they were actually together.
• Reading-- Kids can read to a grandparent, or take turns reading to each other. 
• Performance-- FaceTime works great to play or sing a song or do a dance for an audience. 
• Teach each other something-- Kids can take turns or set up different times to be the teacher, teaching and demonstrating a gymnastics or dance move, or other how-to for a friend. 

Last, but not Least, School-Related Stuff

If you are lucky enough to have some homeschoolers (or remote schoolers) as friends or family, virtual bits of the school day here and there where you can share learning are a fun way to break up the routine.

• Jeopardy or other learning game-- Quiz kids on a shared topic of study.
• Book talk about a common book or author or topic-- Could be a discussion you structure and lead, or one you leave to them.
• Share/Present-- Last spring we had a few "talent shows" for my kids and my niece and nephew when each kid could share or show off any new skill or learning they wanted to All the Grandparents. Our four kids read writing aloud, performed magic tricks, recited things they'd memorized (state capitals), played a piece on an instrument, and did gymnastics routines. Remembering this makes me want to do it again. It was a fun way to bring people together and give the kids all an audience and an ego boost.   
• Share a lesson-- During normal life there are homeschool classes, and homeschool co-ops where parents come together and take turns teaching groups of homeschoolers on topics of individual expertise. This is not something we've tried this year, but seems like a reasonable thing to do virtually. 

For Adults, Too

My husband and I don't play many games but we have played more in the last nine months than usual. Here are a couple things we've really enjoyed.   

• Sporcle Virtual Live Trivia-- For $5 per device, a team of people in separate locations (up to ten households) competes against other teams. It's low key and fun. After each question is posed, you get a few minutes in a private "breakout room" with only your team members to discuss your answer and chat. Sign up on their site couldn't be quicker and easier. They have plenty of "all topics" trivia nights, and we've also done a couple of themed trivia nights with particular groups of friends-- and we let W stay up one night to play Harry Potter trivia too.
• Jackbox Games-- A drawing game called Drawful and a funny game of brainstorming funny responses to questions called Quiplash have been our favorites, but this company has a whole suite of games. Most of these can be played with up to eight people/devices so it's another fun way to get together with friends and family. (W and M are both fans of playing Drawful, and we just keep the "family-friendly" setting checked when playing with kids.)

One of the many unexpected gifts we are thankful for in these strange times is that, in some ways, we see friends and family more, and on shorter notice, than ever before. It's not the same of course, but it can still be a lot of fun. Please share your favorite ideas that we should try next!    

More Fun, Free, Educational Resources

A couple weeks ago I shared a quick list at the end of this post of some free, easy to access ideas and resources for learning at home. There are so many varied, enriching things to do with kids, so I've been compiling this second list of ideas. Most of these we've used when taking a break between chunks of time spent on regular academics, or to supplement learning about a topic. While most of these are online things and kids don't need more screen time, in moderation I thought these were all worthwhile. (And plenty are videos telling how to do a real, hands-on thing.) It seems like every day right now I come across more and I'm excited to have them all in one place to go back to when we have a few extra minutes here and there. I hope some are new and useful for others!

Exercise

Cosmic Kids Yoga. Yoga videos for kids on YouTube. Jamie, who does the videos, has them on lots of themes: Harry Potter, Star Wars, Going on a Bear Hunt, Very Hungry Caterpillar. She tells the story of the book or movie while incorporating active yoga poses throughout. It's entertaining and a good stretch.

AmbyrFyt Training. Ambyr is a fitness instructor who is now at home with her two kids, so she is now doing half-hour + live FytKids sessions on Facebook Live. (Or you can watch them afterward through her page.) It was a real workout! Last week we did Cosmic Yoga four days and Ambyr's video one day and between the two I had sore muscles for days, but it was a great antidote to feeling cooped up.

"Donkey kicks." I sat that one out.

GoNoodle dance videos. As their web site says, this is "active screen time." Like all these resources in this list, this is free. Tons of short, free videos. Some are for calm and mindfulness, while some are energizing movement.

Science

Montshire Museum of Science online resources. Staff of our local museum are putting short videos online of do-at-home activities, like this fun seed-starting activity I was reminded of when we watched. We're waiting for them to sprout. I've done this with first graders before and it is so exciting to see them germinate up close.

Northern Woodlands treasure hunt. We have an interesting book, The Outside Story, published locally and detailing things happening in nature month by month. This list of things to look for outside this time of year (at least around us) is from the same organization. Lots of detailed information on things to look for, such as pileated woodpecker feeding holes and skunk cabbage. Speaking of scavenger hunts...

Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS). This list of resources for parents includes a scavenger hunt directed at preschoolers. M and I did this the other day and she was super engaged. We found everything on the list in our own yard, but some of them took some close looking which was perfect. (I could have easily made my own scavenger hunt but this one was ready to go and I just printed it off!) Other good documents and ideas are here too, including links to the Facebook Live events they offer. We watched a live talk with a staff person holding a barred owl, and got to submit a question and even had it answered live-- very exciting!

 

Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex has online science lessons and activities. We haven't done any of these yet but it's on our list to try!

Bioturbation with and without soil fauna. A quick time-lapse video showing the difference in soil with bugs and worms in it and soil without. Made me wonder if I should add worms to our compost.

Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium is a sort of eccentric science museum in Vermont that we've visited in person before. They now have some videos online, like one on how to identify trees in late winter, and live classes.

Music

Laurie Berkner Band music video. This particular one is a 42-minute video, so perhaps best to watch in portions, but it includes lots of cheerful preschool-friendly music videos including, "This is Me and My Energy" and "We Are the Dinosaurs."

Berliner Philharmoniker, German orchestra, has free digital access to concerts and films free right now with the code BERLINPHIL. We watched a Frozen song played by orchestra and the youngest member of our household was singing along.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is live streaming performances on YouTube while they are closed right now.

Barefoot Books. These are videos of preschool-friendly books on different themes, both read aloud and as sing alongs with words across the screen.

Duet by two kid violinists in lockdown in Italy playing "Viva la Vida." Their bouncy energy and cheerfulness was contagious.

Art

Dav Pilkey drawing videos and other fun links. We drew Dog Man and Big Jim the other day (then W went to get his actual Dog Man books and ended up drawing several other characters using the how-to-draw pages at the back as well).

  

Funny, short article with photos of people recreating famous art at home. The kids recently became familiar with a couple of these paintings so they could appreciate this, and our whole family was cracking up at some of the creative ways people who are staying home had "copied" famous works of art.

Stained glass sidewalk art. We actually got this idea and the next from a live Mystery Science mini lesson (Mystery Science is great, and free for the rest of this year with lots of things that are easy to do at home). Put tape down on a sidewalk to form a large rectangle (they used what looked like blue painter's tape). Then put more tape down within the rectangle, forming different smaller triangles and other shapes. Color each space in different colors of chalk, then peel off the tape for a pretty stained-glass look. I wish we had a sidewalk! But we may do some version of this anyway.

Aluminum foil sculptures. Take a sheet of aluminum foil and form it into a sculpture, simple or complex...snake, dragon, dog. My 9-year-old was very excited to try this right away.

Reading/Read Aloud

Grover reading The Monster at the End of this Book. A cute reading of the classic Golden Book by the Muppet himself.

Authors reading their books aloud. We've watched a few of these. It's neat to be at home with authors and realize they are quarantined now too, not to mention hearing an author read a book, period. We enjoyed a couple of Oliver Jeffers's quirky books and videos the other day.

Free books on Audible. Stream audiobooks for free while schools are closed! You can search what's available or browse by age.

Miscellaneous Enrichment
Virtual field trips links. This is a calendar of virtual field trips for families with a different place for each day. We've gone to this link a few times but haven't made it past San Diego Zoo which is listed first because they've got a great kids' web site with easy-to-digest information on lots of animals, live animal cams, and brief engaging informational videos. I'm looking forward to checking out some of the other destinations on here. 

Schoolhouse Rock videos. Recently rediscovered this and my 4th grader learned about conjunctions and interjections. So catchy. There are also a lot of history-based ones which I didn't realize or had forgotten. Dated but fun.

Newsela--- free access for the rest of this school year! We have used this site all year mostly to read kid-friendly news stories (you can click to adjust the reading level of most articles) and to research topics on which we don't have enough books, but there is even more good stuff here. 

Billings Farm and Museum is another local favorite of ours. Now, online, they have lots of crafts and activities, like quick-pickled carrots, how to make homemade toys, and coloring pages to print. Also there are very brief videos showing their animals and other Vermont farm activities like how to tap a maple tree.

Kid-Friendly TED Talks. A playlist of TED Talks to watch with kids. We watched one about the evolution of dance and one about the kids doing real science. Great conversation starters.

30 Days of Lego Play Calendar. W has not used the sequential aspect of this but loves it as a creative menu of things to do when he takes breaks during the day and he's made some neat things recently.

The fastest car

War robot

Roller coaster

It's Not Usually Like This

Life is Strange Right Now 
Life is strange right now and I think there will probably be a number of long-term effects of this weird quarantined time. Maybe more people will work from home and more meetings will just be emails in the future! Will teachers be paid more, or schools be funded better? Will many people change careers, having realized either the brutal fact that they are essential (and that their whole family is therefore subjected to greater risk) or non-essential (and that they've lost their job)? Will more people become more self-sufficient and plant gardens? Will we appreciate and patronize the arts more? When things speed back up again, will we go a little slower than we used to, having experienced how it feels to be less on-the-go? In a spring with no Little League or birthday parties, while going to the grocery store is a big scary outing, life is so different right now for everyone.

I've noticed the word "homeschool" being used a lot more often now. But I've started to cringe a little when I hear both the positive and negative takes on homeschooling. Talking with more and more friends with kids and soaking in the reality of their situations, I know that most families are not in fact experiencing what homeschoolers usually experience. So many families are figuring out day-to-day a new version of school at home, working while supervising school assignments. Regular working parents are feeling guilty as they try to do their own work and worry that kids are getting too much screen time (in the typical ways but also to access their school work), that their kids are ignored much of the day, that their kids don't have enough work from school to do, or that they as parents don't fully understand the goals/expectations of the learning that needs to happen. And the teachers I've talked with are figuring out how to fill their new roles day-to-day as well; none of them decided to be an elementary school teacher with "distance learning" on their radar...and most of them are struggling to work from home while supervising their own kids, too.  

I bet it's nearly impossible to do your own work and help your kid at the same time. But even so I think parents maybe need to take the reins a little more and see themselves as their kids' teacher for a couple of months. You know your kid best and you are qualified to do that, and entitled to because of this situation. Maybe it takes a shuffling of the schedule, changing when you work if you can so you can have an hour or two a day to focus on them and then maybe not worrying too much about how productive they are when you need to be focused on your own work. Maybe weekends, when parents are more available, become school days and the kids get two weekdays completely off while you work. I think maybe the way to survive this without going crazy is to worry less about figuring out what the teacher wants/expects, and more about taking the chance to understand your kid as a learner and helping them focus on individual ways they can grow. I know there aren't ever enough hours in a day as a parent but right now might be the best chance for you to really see what it is about math that they are good at and what is a struggle. Their teacher simply can't be as on top of their progress now. Maybe kids' former teachers, with their abundance of resources and experience, can be viewed more as consultants. I'm not saying kids shouldn't do their work from school. But the buck stops at the parent now. Homeschool has a lot less wasted/transition time, so it's not surprising if they are "done" with the concrete assignments sent from school long before the school day is over. If you're feeling the school isn't giving them enough work or it doesn't feel authentic or challenging, assign them other things to do based on what you know they need to work on. Or now could be the time to push kids a little to delve into their own interests, do their own research, set and pursue individual, not necessarily school-work-related, goals for themselves for the day or the week. If you're worried you don't know the academic expectations, go to your school district site and click around to try to find out a little about their curricula in different areas. Or you can look up the Common Core Standards online so you at least have a gist of the types of expectations at their grade level, such as what are they supposed to be able to do as a reader besides just to read for x minutes a day (but don't get bogged down by individual standards because that could be overwhelming). And because teachers are a little lost right now too and just wanting to be helpful, I don't think parents should hesitate to email the teacher and ask what the goal is in a certain area, or ask them to give you an outline of where the math work (or other area in question) is headed for the year. I think it's incredible how people have just adjusted with no prep time to a whole new normal. I've heard that some families are struggling and I think people should know that they're not alone. It's hard to be a homeschool parent with a blindfold on and parents shouldn't have to be. 

Life is different for homeschoolers, too. 
I am no expert on homeschooling, having done it less than one year. But I also wish parents could hear this: sheltering in place/quarantine homeschool that we're all living now is not normal homeschool life. Homeschooling when it's a choice can be anything you want it to be and in my experience, it is amazing. We've lead a full and varied life this year, full of serious schoolwork and also sports and activities and lessons and outdoor adventures and making new friends and connecting with old ones and volunteering. We see concerts and plays and go to museum events and homeschool classes and we've even toured a furniture factory. We had some really exciting outings planned for this spring that I thought would really bring to life some of the learning we've done. But that's all been cancelled, of course. We're still learning at home. I understand what the learning goals are for my kids and am not having to take the lead from a remote educator. But in every other way, for homeschoolers, too, life is very different now. Our lives are so much quieter, so much more isolated, than it has been all year up until now. I feel like now we are for the first time living up to some cliches about homeschoolers-- like wearing sweatpants all day because now we in fact never leave the house. If you were considering homeschooling in your future, please don't make that decision based on this very strange time we are living in right now! 

Our experience two weeks in
We just finished week two of being at home all the time. The kids have not left the house. I personally have left once for groceries. The first week of this I was just feeling so grateful with how relatively unaffected our family is. We're okay. My husband can work from home. I was already homeschooling. There are lots of new routines and dynamics to work out, but it's working out. During week two I started to feel a little off-kilter sometimes. I'll say here that we are a family of introverts. We like being home, and having downtime. But, there were days in this past week that I felt so tired for no good reason, when I just felt sort of blah all day. The number of children I was homeschooling had doubled from one to two, but that wasn't the sole reason I felt a little less patient that usual, a little more easily frazzled without knowing why. I really like being with my kids, so I felt badly feeling this way. I think it was because I was going one pace all the time shuffling around the house-- never trying to get out the door on a timeline, not having the car rides to preschool and various outings to break up the day, not having things like dance class to go to where I didn't have to be "on," but got to just observe. What parent has downtime anyway? And I chose to homeschool. But I realized that even as a homeschool parent I used to have more built-in breaks or at least changes of pace that kept my energy up. What I felt lately made me think of the odd exhaustion that slowly wandering around a museum can cause.

When I homeschooled for the past six months with just my fourth grader while my preschooler was in preschool, we allowed plenty of interruptions for fun enriching things, but we mostly followed a pretty academic schedule. We had converted our loft to a classroom of sorts where we did most of our work and kept all our materials. Schedules and external structures help my son and it worked for us. It's funny because not long ago, before all these changes, I had on my to-do list to look into what homeschooling multiple kids could look like and to decide what was best for both my kids next year. I hadn't gotten all that figured out yet (and I like to plan things like that before leaping in) but I was suddenly trying it out, ready or not.

Our nice little physical homeschool space has been taken over by my husband and his computer and multiple monitors. We now store academics by subject in piles at one end of the kitchen table, or wherever we used them last. We have a more flexible schedule right now, out of necessity. Our schedule is less of a schedule and more of a developing routine now. I do some things together with both kids, some planned and some spontaneous like when we had to go out the other morning to build a snowman in the fresh March snow we'd just gotten overnight. I have some one-on-one time with each kid, and my older has to be a little more independent because there's only so long my 5-year-old can be. I have some goals for each kid but I never know exactly how it will go or what will happen when-- it unfolds a little more organically now. Our day doesn't fit into neat boxes any more. That's probably a good thing, although sometimes I miss our previous homeschool life and I'm still getting used to this new one.

I thought attending (actual) preschool was important socially, and I can't replicate the community she had in preschool, but having my preschooler home now, it's easy to be a little more intentional with my time with her at home in thinking of the things she is ready to learn. Just the other day, she wanted to play with her cash register in the morning with me while her brother was at work in the other room. I started talking about the different coins in the drawer and then I mentioned the heads side and the tails side. We started flipping the coins and soon we were playing a game she was really into where one of us was heads and the other tails and we counted who got more.

I give my fourth grader a list of priorities for each morning, his more independent time. I like that he has taken ownership of his work. He stretches, wanders away between each task, and it's neat to see him find his own rhythm. He'll take breaks by working on an intricate dot-to-dot page for a while or repositioning his current Lego scenes, or playing with his sister. He'll strategize about which academics to do first and why and that is a type of thinking that our previous schedule didn't really foster. One day recently he was delighted that he'd gotten his list checked off early and had extra time to just play. He has seemed more grown up, more self-driven, more able to manage his own focus with this increased leeway and options to navigate. I enjoy seeing him choose to lie on the floor or sit on the couch or at the table, near the rest of us or in another room, with or without headphones, depending on the task and time of day and mood, and then getting to see the logical result of how his decisions worked out for him.

On the plus side
While life is so different and more challenging right now, there are silver linings.

Life right now is certainly simpler. There are no busy weekends and no deliberating about what to do or not to do each weekend. We stay home, bake bread, do puzzles, play games, read books. There are no backpacks or packed lunches. We have no plans and are not in a position to make any. I don't need to strategize on which nights to plan the quicker dinners. No day is any busier than any other. Every day is a blank slate, if a bit stir-crazy at times.

Also, thank goodness for Facetime and Zoom and other amazing technology that connects us. We have gotten together with friends and family online often over the last few days. We've had nice face to face chats with grandparents and friends and their young kids. In some cases were are not just maintaining connections but making some that we wouldn't have if life was normal. We Facetimed with an uncle yesterday and got a tour of his southern backyard and garden, and also with a cousin in D.C. We love those guys but they just aren't family we typically call up on the phone. We have plans to call them again, show them the progress of our melting northern backyard. Just last night after we got the kids to bed, we met up through Zoom with seven other couples we are lucky enough to be friends with and played a really fun drawing game online with them (Drawful) and then we just chatted for a couple hours. It was a great Saturday night.

I've learned big changes can be healthy. Any huge change creates the space for so many new things that you didn't plan or expect. This happened for me when we made the enormous switch to homeschooling. I think, if we allow ourselves to see it, this is happening to many of us now. I had one friend share that they are working their way through all the Marvel movies with their kids at night since they'd done away with bed times and wake up times. What a special memory those kids will have of this time I bet. At breakfast over a week ago I pulled out a set of cards we have but have never really used that each show a famous painting and give some interesting information about the artist or artwork on the back. I asked the kids what they noticed in one of the paintings in the set, what it looked like to them, and we read all the information on the back about when it was painted and where. We've found ourselves pulling out a new painting card in the same way each morning since, and quizzing them on the growing stack. In the past, breakfast was sometimes rushed, and this just wasn't something we would have done before, but it's a new family routine that we are all enjoying now.

I think the most important silver lining in this is to remember the kid perspective. I am sure a lot of kids are super sad about not seeing their friends and no sports. But amid all the stress, frustration, anxiety that no school (or no work) may cause adults, don't assume the kids see this "stay home" time that way too. I vaguely mentioned to W that I'd been thinking about how different right now is from how our school year had been like so far, and I asked him what things he could think of that were different right now. There were all sorts of things I thought he might mention that I knew he must be disappointed about. But his entire response was, "Well, Daddy's home now for every meal and he's always on time and everything just feels complete with all of us here." I was so glad I asked because I realized, the bottom line to him is, this is a cozy time where his home just feels complete in a way it hadn't before. So there you go. If you are grieving or annoyed at all the ways life is not normal now or you find yourself a little lost, your kids may see and remember this period of time very differently.