Woo wee, what a crazy 2 weeks it has been?!?! I think everyone can agree with that. I know I haven’t experienced ANYTHING like this in my lifetime!! I even asked my 77 year old neighbor if he had experienced anything remotely close to this and he said he can barely remember, but he did experience a quarantine when he was a child for Polio. WOW!!
My kids came home with 2 weeks worth of school/home work. And, to be honest with you, the homework has been good. It has given us a bit of structure…at least in the mornings 😉 We usually spend about two hours working on homework and then it’s time to move on. I do wonder what will happen after this upcoming week. We will be out of work, and the bigger question, will the kids return to school at all this school year?!?!
So, each afternoon, we have tried to do something to keep us from going a bit crazy. Here is what we came up with this past week. Wish us luck for this week 😉
- Walk on the beach
We have a local state park, Newtowne Neck State Park, just down the road from us. It is a small, beautiful and isolated beach…and also a peninsula. It is surrounded by 3 bodies of water – Breton Bay, St. Clements Bay and the Potomac River. A little bit of history – it was the first settlement in Maryland after St. Mary’s City (the original capital of Maryland!!) discovered by Captain John Smith. It was certainly chilly the day we were there, but it was empty and Sully enjoyed his first day at the beach 🙂
2. Bake
I am totally grasping for straws by calling this ‘baking’, hahaha. I say that because this recipe is truly THAT easy!! I plan on doing a full post on it this week, so I will just leave this one picture. We made it with the intention of giving it to some pretty important people in our lives 🙂 I’ll admit, we couldn’t resist some ourselves.
3. Read as a family
I actually consider this 1 under 2 categories, this one as well as supporting a local business. We did a curbside pickup for this book. We had purchased Greta’s Story 2 weeks earlier (before the Quarantine began) for a friend of Matti Jane’s and Matti Jane could not stop talking about how she wanted it. So, once school was officially out, we grabbed this book and instituted ‘Mommy Story Time’ – a chapter each day. The kids get so excited about it and they just love this story…how one young girl could have such an international impact.
**Truth be told, we are usually in our PJs, unbrushed teeth and either reading while snuggling on this couch or reading it in my bed. I asked the kids to get dressed when Peter was here to take this one little picture 😉 **
We purchased our book at White Rabbit Children’s Books and Gifts Store (for you locals!! And the owner is super awesome and very responsive!!) but if you are not local, you can purchase it here on Amazon.
4. Learn how to draw
I am also doing a full post on this tomorrow, so I will leave just 2 pictures here today. My high school girlfriend, Amy, posted these free drawing tutorials on her Facebook page…all I will say is 25 minutes of QUIET!!!
Thank you so much Amy for this FREE activity my kids LOVED!!
5. Support local businesses
This activity certainly is not “free” but it is so good for the soul. I recently saw a meme that says something like this – “Remember all of those small businesses you hit up for your kids’ school auction, now is the time to return the favor”. My goodness, such true words in such a trying time. We have purchased lunch from Ironwood Grill and Olde Town Pub, purchased books from White Rabbit Children’s Books and Gifts Store and a cookie kit from Kathryn’s Crafty Cakes.
This is not a scorecard, we can certainly do more, these are just a couple of ideas 🙂 We plan on continuing this as often as possible during the Quarantine. I had told my sister that my original idea was to do order from small, local restaurants every other night, but we haven’t been able to do that as often as I intended because we have a lot of food here to eat. Catch 22 :-/
I hope this gives you and your family some ideas to get through this “together”. Let me end this post on a “keeping it real” note – Peter and I are fitting in lots of episodes of Homeland and the kids finished the new season of Greenhouse Academy yesterday. Trust me, it is not just school work, art, crafts and reading…haha
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