This is week five or six (I can’t keep track anymore) of working from home and school being closed. The days are pretty similar when you can’t really do anything. However, we are trying to keep the kids (ages 7 and 3) in some sort of schedule.
We start our “school/work days” with a schedule that approximately looks like this:
- 8:00 – wake up, get dressed, brush teeth, brush hair
- 8:30 – make coffee, make breakfast, log into work and check email, kids eat
- 9:00 – 10:00 – parents work, kids play
- 10:00 – 11:00 – Emma does Language Arts; Ava watches a video of a preschool teacher doing circle time on YouTube and then reads books with Dad
- 11:00-11:30 – kids play
- 11:30 – make lunch, decide if we should have kids eat now or wait 30 minutes
- 12:00 – talk with kids while parents eat lunch
- 12:45-1:00 – get Ava to get ready for rest time
- 1:00 – 2:00 – rest time for kids in their rooms
- 2:00 – 3:00 – Emma does Math; sometimes Ava does math or calls a grandmom for conversation time
- 3:00 – snack time for kids, alphabet play for Ava
- 3:30 – art time
- 4:00 – outside play if it’s nice
- 4:30 – book time
- 5:00 – everyone stops working and cleans the whole entire house…again
Some days are filled with more instructional time, more reading, more hands-on activities, and some days are us just trying to hang on until 5pm.
Emma seems to be doing ok with the whole routine, but Ava is struggling some days. This poor child will be a mess when she goes back to preschool. Ava is just DONE at 3pm every day. There is no more ability to listen or be helpful. We’ve tried to give extra snuggles and silly time to acknowledge the fact that this is all out of the normal routine for all of us.
Work got extended to be at home until June 1. At a minimum, I can’t even see myself going back to work until public school is officially over because I still have to make sure Emma does school work.
School was phasing in instructional time over the past 6 weeks, so we just started phase 3: new instruction. Emma is getting the hang of meeting weekly with her class, doing activities on a computer, taking pictures of her work, submitting work online, reading books on iPads, and using Google Classroom LMS. She’s such a good kid, and she is a super helpful big sister. Sometimes we give her treats after Ava goes to bed just so she knows that we appreciate how good she is.
Some things we have done to keep busy:
- Build a sensory table filled with macaroni noodles
- Make a bean bag toss
- Make a geoboard
- Paint rocks and make them look like little mice
- Put surprises on random people’s steps in the neighborhood, such as mouse rocks or Easter eggs
- Paint on paper, paint on cardboard boxes
- Paint ceramic tea sets
- Play with water, play with sand
- Build a fort
- Play outside on the swingset
- Dig in the mulch
- Do art activities from Nana
- Build towers out of legos
- Color windows with paint, markers, or wet foam shapes
- Clean the house again and again
Geoboard 
Mouse Rocks 
Outside Play 
Sensory Table 
Easter Egg Surprises
I made some masks for my mom, dad, and grandmom for Easter because I knew that they might have to go in and out of doctors’ offices with Meem. I told Emma and Ava that I would make them some masks, and you would think I offered to take them to Disney World or something. They are so excited about it and ask me often when I’m going to make them masks.
I just ordered some new fabric since they are so excited. I will let them pick out their patterns and be a part of the mask-making process. Hey, it’s something to do, and they can be proud of their creation in the end.
Honestly, I have no idea what they will do with these masks because the kids have not gone anywhere, and I don’t plan on taking them anywhere either. Once we had to drive to the store, and Peter went inside, and they saw him put a mask on. Then they noticed that everyone coming out of the store was also wearing masks. They were intrigued.
I saw that a few schools overseas are having children return to preschool with masks, so if that becomes a thing here, we will have some for them. I would imagine it might be a slow return to normal even when things start to open again. Our area is still essential businesses only, six-foot distancing, 10 people maximum in a place, no dine-in, take-out only, only go out if you need to, etc.
Ava has been telling me lately that she has “the germ.” Then she says, “I have coronavirus.” This kid. I think she has heard that term maybe twice. She hears EVERYTHING. I informed her that she is healthy and should not be saying that to people. We don’t listen to the news or watch a lot of TV with the kids, so I know she just has a crazy good memory and likes to get a reaction out of people.