Some thoughts and resources: Day 2

What a time! Things are weird aren’t they. I’m in CA with my kids and the entire state was just asked/mandated to stay home for everything but essential things like Dr’s visits and grocery trips. We are on day 2 of the school’s closure and feeling ok so far.

I am a chronic overthinker so I keep feeling this deep sense of the MEANING and WEIGHT that this experience has and how it will be a defining moment in our collective history. So I wanted to keep a bit of a record of what we did here, stuck inside, how we managed, the resources we used, and things that helped.

Yesterday

-Yesterday we played with googly eyes, made those videos where you put eyes on your chin and film the lower half of your face upside down saying stuff and cracked up in hysterics. We watched Mulan, the kids did their homework provided by their excellent teachers, we listened to the audiobook of The Animorphs #1, I worked on a beautiful puzzle, the kids did lego and bayblades and played games on the xbox using the party thing so they could talk to family at the same time (pretty cool use for video games I will admit). We ate one of those bags of frozen meals from Costco that has the noodles and chicken and veggies already in it for dinner and had chocolate chip pancakes for Breakfast. We watched 2 hours of footage from a dog beach in Australia on YouTube (it was really great). All three kids spent a lot of time with play dough.

-I finished reading a few books (all had been started other times and were nearly done so it’s not as impressive as it sounds). This one was very thought provoking and narrated well, and this one was a hilarious and biting satire of a world in which an Amazon-like company controls just about everything.

-The hard part was, is, and will be, understanding that we can’t just run around the neighborhood with friends right now as this isn’t just a snow day situation. That’s what my kids are struggling with the most.

Today (3/20/20 - Friday?)

-We used this cool website to explore National Parks in Hawaii and Utah.

-We got Junie B. Jones audiobooks that the first grader in the house is listening to and reading along with (they’re pretty cheap so getting a couple and re-reading is fine with me). We looked through the offerings that Scribd has that included one of the 9 year-old’s favorite series and she listened and read for a while. (they’re offering free access to everything for 30 days which is a really awesome). Audible has a website right now with a bunch of free books available to access right now too that’s worth looking into.

-The kids worked on their science projects and did their school work online again.

-We checked out some of the virtual rides linked in this article which is fun since my kids haven’t been to any of these parks before. Downside is that some of these videos are kinda dark and anticlimactic as you can imagine, but it’s worth looking at for something different.

-We are also enjoying spreading out some of these cool things, and the scholastic books app/website Home Base has some really cool games on it based on some popular kids books series that mine have been enjoying.

What I learned today

-Today I learned something important. While I don’t necessarily need a schedule for my kids besides meals being somewhat regular and getting their assignments and chores done, I do need one for MYSELF so that I know when and how I’ll be able to get my stuff done while we are all in the house together. That realization was a relief and a calming recognition that I can let my kids use their choices, and as long as they get those things done, I’m calling it a success. But I can be more firm with the schedule and structure for myself so that I can feel calm in allowing that flexibility.

-I figured out why I didn’t sleep as well last night (no, it wasn’t The Office’s fault) - my background noises are gone. We live near enough to a major highway to hear it when my window is cracked open at night. Since people are staying in now, there’s no freeway sounds. An interesting development similar to when you don’t hear the birds in winter I guess. Not necessarily an ending, but a change of season.