If you thought being quarantined at home with your significant other was going to be a challenge try throwing kids into the mix! Boy do things become challenging. I mean I love my kids to death but being on quarantine has definitely brought a whole new perspective to it. Not to mention throwing in home schooling while also trying to work a full-time job.
I know for myself COVID-19 has taken it's toll on me mentally so I can only imagine what my kids are going through. It's a very uncertain time but the most important thing for me was to be able to keep some sort of normal routine with them. I will admit my kids were very excited at the prospect of home schooling in the beginning. We set up an area for them to do their school work. We also made sure that school work was being done between certain times. We wanted to be able to keep the separation of home and school apparent. Aside from school being closed, all the after school activities were also put on hold which made keeping the kids occupied a bit of a challenge.
Now you have to start getting creative as a parent. How to entertain 2 energetic almost 7 year olds while everything is closed and there is no where to go? (Paying with friends who live 2 houses down from us on the block isn't even an option)
DRAWING TUTORIALS: My husband and I are both artists. I went to college for fine art and now work as a graphic designer. My husband designs and fabricates sets for theatre. We both love to draw but haven't really done much of it in the recent years. An activity we started while on quarantine was drawing tutorials with the kids. More specifically Disney Character drawing. Almost every night we would watch a youtube video of a Disney Cast member drawing one of our favorite characters. (We would take turns picking who to draw). It's so much fun to all be working on the same picture and see how differently we all interpreted it.
OUTDOOR WALKS: Since the weather started getting nicer and the temperatures started warming up we decided to take walks after dinner. It was a nice time for us to spend some family time together and also get some exercise.
COOKING & BAKING: Another fun activity we got into was cooking and baking. Now that we had more time on our hands we started exploring new recipes. We pulled down some of our recipe books and started experimenting with them. Our favorite was diving into the Galaxy's Edge Cookbook my husband received for Christmas. Lots of fun and different recipes in there. (I'll share some of our new discoveries in a separate post).
READING NEW BOOKS: For those of you who don't know me, I love books. When we had our baby shower for the twins we had everyone bring books instead of cards so we could start them on a wonderful book collection. Every night we read a bedtime story (some nights it's 2 stories). It has always been a great bonding experience for us. Since being on quarantine I have taken to ordering new books for the kids. Anytime I had to place an Amazon order I was always sure to throw at least 1 book in there for them. They get excited at the idea of a new book and we got to add to our ever growing library.
MOVIE TIME: Just as my husband and I have been binging shows while on quarantine, we have also started watching more movies with the kids. Sometimes it was a new movie that none of us had watched before (like ONWARD, if you haven't seen it I suggest you check it out, it's on Disney+ if you're interested) and sometimes it was an old movie that I couldn't wait to share with them. The most recent one being "The Princess Bride". That is one of my all-time favorite movies (meaning I could pretty much recite every line start to finish). I first saw it when I was about my kids age (about 7) and I couldn't wait for them to be old enough to watch it. We finally get the chance when Disney+ released it. They were so excited and loved it just as much as I did.
BIKE RIDES: Turned out to be a great time for my kids to learn to ride their bikes without training wheels. (Something we have been trying to get them to do since last summer.) At the request of my daughter, we finally took off the training wheels. An hour into practicing she was off and there was no stopping her. My son took a little bit more coaxing but he was quickly on his sisters tail and now there is no stopping them.
Despite the difficulty we are all facing with COVID-19, I'd like to try and see the positive in the situation. This brought my family closer together. We have more bonding time and It made me really appreciate my husband and my kids and the time we have together. I want to try and cling on to as much of that as possible when things start to go back to normal and not get sucked into the craziness we all left behind at the start of quarantine.