"What is a 'zoom'?"
When everything first shut down and was really scary and there were so many unknowns, I think I comforted myself by being as organized as humanly possible. Closets were cleaned out, drawers were reorganized. Shoe bins were sorted. You get the point.
Taylor and I decided quite quickly that we were going to take the attitude that this pandemic was a temporary "pause" and that we would try to take advantage of the time at home together.
We quickly decided that the daily arts and crafts projects just couldn't happen at the kitchen table anymore, and obviously I wasn't having Baby Bear families into my home studio for sessions, so we decided to set up shop in my studio!
We FaceTimed with family near and far. The kids would chat with my parents, Nana and Papa, daily, even though they lived about 5 minutes away (I will say that was one of the hardest parts in the beginning, going from physically seeing them every single day to just seeing and hearing them from our laptop screen). Quinn would play games with cousins and friends via zoom.
We did anything and everything we could think of, either virtually or just at home on their own, to keep their bodies and brains occupied.
We built birdhouses, had drive-in movies in the basement, dug up worms in the dirt, made s'mores over the stove, created bird feeders, and worked on school work. We enjoyed every single birthday parade, school parade, and any event where we could see familiar faces, even if just from a distance.
Our favorite thing to do was to create sidewalk/driveway messages with chalk!
The entire spring and summer, I started getting braver with my activities - I started adding educational concepts into our games and really put quite a bit of thought into how each activity could teach a concept to each of them.
Finally, the big day came! Quinn was going to third at his school, and Nora and Conall were officially students at my homeschool. I remember feeling nervous but super excited!
