We’ve almost come to the end of three weeks since Washington state’s governor ordered all schools to shut down and do school online because of the coronavirus. I have four teens who came home with that order and while it took us a bit to get readjusted to them all being home, some had been away at college, we are doing pretty well with this extra time on our hands.
I’ve seen some complaints on social media from folks who aren’t used to this slower paced life and I thought I’d share a few of the things that we are doing to make life more bearable for even social teens. Admittedly, we may have had a head start on getting adjusted to this since we have spent many a year in the homeschooling realm already, but even this mom of six had kind of gotten used to a little more peace and quiet and had some attitude adjusting to do.
One of the things we are doing is pursuing some of our former interests such as gardening, crocheting and reading. At the beginning of this quarantine I had scary visions of four teens sitting around the living room glued to their phones and having giant sized attitudes. I decided right away to curb that by having them all figure out a daily schedule for themselves. I had them include time for outdoor exercise, time for chores, time for reading and crafting and some time to communicate with friends. Since we had spring break for the first week and a half of this past three weeks, these schedules proved to be invaluable!
The kids helped each other stick to their schedules by getting their siblings to come outside with them when it was exercise time and recruiting each other to play games or help with projects. Three of the four teens are now in full swing of online classes, the fourth is done with high school and not currently in college so I have put her into “home culinary school” for the time being and assigned her to help make the families main meal each day which we eat mid day.
This “culinary student” doesn’t have very many hobbies and is extremely social so she is the one I most worry about sitting around bored and having a bad attitude but this plan is helping a lot! She is happy to be learning something she’ll need for independence in life and feels good about herself when she accomplishes the job well.
One of the teens is a 19 year old boy who was going to college and working construction. Providentially, I believe, he purchased an old camp trailer from a friend right before this stay at home time, and now he has a project to work on when he has spare time. He is remodeling it and hoping to make it into a small air b n b.
Mama’s attitude needs to be dealt with from time to time too, I must admit. For my alone time I have been writing, reading, videoing and gardening. Today I photographed some of the blossoms in my yard. I came across apricot and peach trees in bloom, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, dandelions, hen and chicks, johnny jump ups and more. These never fail to make me happy!
Last week I brought a large pot of soil into the house because our weather has been quite temperamental lately and I wasn’t able to go out and work in the yard. I planted radishes and chard in the pot. The radishes are because they always sprout up quickly and though they aren’t our favorite food they will add to our salads. The chard because I didn’t have any lettuce seeds right now and wanted to plant some salad greens. I plan to pick up or order more seeds soon so that I can get the rest of the garden started whether indoors in pots or outdoors depending on the needs of the plants.
I’m planning to check in here a little more often than I have in the past since I have more time. Here’s hoping you all are finding things to do that will enrich your lives as you stay at home during these unprecedented times and may God bless you and keep you and yours healthy and strong.
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