As we all do our part to flatten the curve and stop the spread of coronavirus, families are hunkering down for a lot of quality time together.
A LOT of quality time.
What should you do with all of that quality time with your feral childrenyoung cherubs over the next two weeks? Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that. We have two weeks of activities for you and your kids right here!
Day 1: Download a homeschool schedule from Pinterest and set your expectations decidedly too high. Cut apples into the shapes of your kids’ favorite animals. Congratulate yourself when you make it through day one filled with art projects, books, and sing-a-longs. Decide that you probably could homeschool these kids forever. It’s easy!
Day 2: Wake up with an air of confidence that will be dashed by 8:35am when the novelty of homeschool has already worn off and your kids are demanding ice cream and tackling each other. Bring back order and make it through a science experiment and some yoga in the afternoon. Cheers yourself with a glass of wine at the end of the day.
Day 3: Wake up startled by your children poking you in the ribs asking if they can go to an indoor soft play. Or the cinema. Or anywhere that is not your house. Gently explain social distancing to them after Googling Social Distancing (simultaneously wishing you could Social Distance yourself from your children).
Day 4: Screen time followed by more screen time with a chaser of additional screen time. Become one with the screen.
Day 5: Regroup and decide that today you are going to be the merriest Mary Berry on the block. Bake biscuits, cakes, and muffins with your children. Eat all of the sugar and clean up flour until the end of time.
Day 6: Wake up to children who have sugar hangovers and realise that you somehow gained seven pounds in 24 hours. Regret everything. Lead your children in song chanelling your inner Maria Von Trapp but in reality sounding remarkably similar to low painful groaning.
Day 7: Announce that today is physical fitness day and engage the kids in some rousing games of back yard tag, jumping jack contests, and amateur weight lifting using all of the tinned food items from your stock pilepantry. To reward yourself, eat the leftover cake from yesterday while your children binge Peppa Pig.
Day 8: It’s art day! Remember that spare room in your house that needs painting? Give your children paint brushes and the rest of the Coffee Cream Beige paint you found leftover in the garage. Spoiler Alert: this room will not look good at the end of this experiment. But it was a nice try.
Day 9: Sleep train your children through the power of role modeling. (Sleep, just sleep all day).
Day 10: Teach your children the fundamentals of business while you attempt to fit seven conference calls into one day. Also, teach yourself (too late) where the mute button is on your video conference tool of choice.
Day 11: Lead your children in random crying to teach them that it’s okay to share your emotions. Then suggest that you all journal about your feelings the rest of the day. #selfcare
Day 12: Write extremely long letters of appreciation to your kids’ teachers and childcare workers. Look into how much it would cost to send them on all-expense paid trips to the Bahamas when this is all over because they deserve it. Remember that would mean your children would be home with you for longer if all the teachers left and decide on John Lewis gift cards instead.
Day 13: Show your children videos about how to make a fort. An outside fort. An outside fort that is far away from you. Give them some power tools and hope for the best.
Day 14: Spend the entire day online reading articles that say this crisis is officially over and praying to every higher power that it’s true. For the love of all things holy let it be true... If it’s not true, go back to Day 1’s activities and start again. But with more wine.
Okay, parents. Are you ready? No? Yeah…we aren’t either. But we’ve got this! (I mean, we definitely don’t, but it’s fine. Everything is fine…)
We have created a Stamptastic Home School Collection that has lots of great educational resources and fun arts and crafts. You can check it out here
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