Well, tonight Boris Johnson has just announced that we are basically all on lockdown. We can go out for one walk a day, to get food or medicine and to go to work if you have to. That's it. No gatherings of more than 2 people and pretty much everything is to close. It felt very surreal watching the announcement, and even though I knew it was coming it still doesn't feel real. If I start to think about it too much I feel stressed out so I guess the approach that I'm taking is to deal with this all one day at a time and not think too far ahead.
Today was our first day of homeschooling. We started the day by going out for a walk in the gardens opposite our house. We avoided people obviously, although Little Boy is still finding that a difficult concept to understand, he did seem to understand it more today. We came home and they did a little Cosmic Kids Yoga on YouTube and the combination of the two seemed to wear them out enough that they were chilled enough to work well afterwards.
We then got cracking with some maths and English. I printed out some resources from Twinkl which were great for Little Boy and Miss J worked on her home school pack that school gave her. E headed upstairs to her bedroom and worked independently. She face-timed her friend and they worked on their school work together which was a nice idea.
After an hour of academic work we got out the paints and they did some rock painting before lunch.
After lunch we all worked together for half an hour to do some cleaning. This worked well and we got a lot done. We then had free play time, the idea is that while the baby is napping I get some time to have some head space and they have the freedom to do anything they want as long as it doesn't include screen time. Miss J and Little Boy actually ended up fighting and arguing really badly so tomorrow I'm going to tell them to head to their rooms separately and play for an hour.
I did have to pop out while the baby was napping (don't worry, hubby is working from home!). I needed to pick up my prescription from the doctors and take it to the pharmacy. Our doctors is now practising social isolation and I had to pick up my prescription through a crack in a window. The pharmacy was the same, only 2 people allowed in the shop at the same time so I couldn't wait for the prescription, I came back in a couple of hours.
While I was out I had a phone call from the vets to say that the ashes of our cat Amber were back so I popped in there to pick them up. The vets is in a pet shop and it was very quiet in there and they had gotten rid of all the animals.
After quiet time at home we got the iPad and laptop out and did some reading eggs activities before having a snack and watching Maddie's Do You Know? on BBC iPlayer. Then Daddy stopped working and took the boys out to the garden to play football while I made dinner. As they had all been so good today I let them stay up late to watch a film - The Neverending Story.
Brandi
We’re also trying to sort out schooling at home and working from home. My husband regularly works from the home and I go to an office. I have set up a temporary workspace in our basement and I’m quite pleased with it. I work for a school district and we’re scrambling behind the scenes to ready everything to be able to support our teachers and mental health staff. It’s such a learning curve for us all but I find it most stressful to also make sure my children are getting proper lessons and not fall behind. They’ve just extended the closure here to the end of April. I have no doubt we will not be returning to schools this year. Our school year ends the 22nd of May. Aside from the schooling aspect we are doing fine. We have a small playground behind our home and a large open space with walking trails. We don’t feel so closed in and the children can run and play. Groceries are getting easier to come by again but I am definitely cognizant of not wasting anything. What a huge shift it has been to be worried about availability of food. I hear toilet paper is an issue but since we shop at Costco we have that in good supply. I so love seeing your vlogs and blog posts. It all feels so similar even though we’re in the U.S. You're doing a fabulous job with your family. Thanks for sharing.
We Made This Life
Ah thanks so much! It is crazy to think that all over the world we are going through the same. It sounds like you have an important job to do and are doing well to juggle it with home schooling too! We are lucky to have open space around us but they have closed parks and playgrounds and walking routes so places to go are limited. I haven't been to the supermarket since we were in official lockdown over a week ago but it's next to impossible to get a food delivery slot so it's a real worry and lots of things are out of stock. It feels like we are living in a totally different world to be honest!