Winter Lockdown with a young family
We have good days.
We have bad days.
This Winter 20/21 Lockdown in the UK has felt much harder than the first Spring Lockdown
Here I’m writing about:
- Fun things first that we do with our kids (Henry is 4, and Mia is 6)
- Home Schooling
- Keeping sane
Good luck to all of us.
I hope some of these barely coherent ramblings may help and entertain.
Kids TV and Films
My Little Pony on Netflix. Both kids adore this! Parents don’t.
Super Wings Henry loves
Pixels Henry loves
Having Netflix and Amazon Prime video has been great. We have an Amazon Fire TV stick rather than using any smart tv features.
Current favourite films are: How to Train Your Dragon series, Cars 2, Harry Potter, Trolls 2
Kids Kindle Fires
We’ve got 2 Kindle Fire tablets which are a few years old.
We don’t subscribe to Amazon Kids plus and prefer to manage exactly what is on them:
The top games at the moment are:
Red Ball 4 - I paid the £2 to unlock all the levels. Best money ever spent.
Paper Toss 2 - thanks for the recommendation Caio
And BBC iPlayer is on them where they can watch
- Hey Duggie
- Numberblocks
Kids Games
A big hit recently has been Fantasy Retro Top Trumps
Chess (Mia who is 6 knows how all the pieces move and likes it!). She watched the end of the Queens Gambit with Ellie and was inspired to learn.
Snakes and Ladders
Home schooling
Having a timetable seems to be good for everyone:
Teachers at our school are being super supportive, and there is a lot of work we should be doing. Some days we do a lot, some days not.
Home schooling is … Like drawing blood out of a stone… Other times it is lovely
Sass, whining, tears, emotional, not wanting to do any school work, not wanting to be on the Teams calls… happens quite regularly (the kids)
I’ve noticed that everyone is getting more used to it, so hopefully getting better.
The kids explaining to me how to be a teacher :-)
Playtime
All schools have regular playtimes..so do we.
Getting outside and having playtime is super important (for us)
Going to local playpark and identifying plants
It’s great as the kids can run around, shout, scream, and I’m over the other side of the field serendipity if other kids are there they can play
Snacking
We’re trying to have 3 proper meals per day, and only some snacks at certain times.
Can I have a snack…. Please don’t empty the sweets out on the floor they empty sweets out ahhhhhh!
then
Snacks pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese just one more
Just another.. just just just another….
Listening
Yes kids.. if you stomp on the flowers after me telling you multiple times not to.. you have to stand against the tree and think about your actions.
Ahhhhh!!!!
Quotes and Thoughts
I pride myself on being calm under pressure, and being an optimist! But recenty I’ve been:
- Gloomy
- Having a short fuse
Getting internally furious when I ask the kids not to do something.. then they do it.. whilst looking at you with utmost defiance.
A quote I heard recently:
The main thing is that I just get bored… (people with no kids) they can go and ….. ahhhhhhhh!!!
Keeping Sane
I’ve been pulling out all the stops. Sometimes it doesn’t work and I get very gloomy.
These are my tactics:
- Get outside
- Sport
- Walking
- Running - strava.com is fun to see what routes people do locally. And to record what you do. I run carrying my phone and have the strava app running.
Escaping for a run after dark. It was blissful.
- Meditate - I used https://www.headspace.com/ and we have a family membership which gives 6 people access.
- Write a diary
- Help other people
- Get enough sleep (I love waking up early and having peace, but easy to get over tired)
- Have good food (fresh vegetables)
- Have time to do nothing :-)
Having time to look out the window, read a newspaper, read a book.. is so invaluable at the moment. Invariabily it leads onto more fun things - doing fun projects.. just for the joy of finding things out eg old graphics card I found which wasn’t using
I also like to
- Writing to friends by email
- Getting off social Media
- Only check the news / weather once per day
Video Games for Grown ups
I’m not a gamer, but thought it would be fun to try.
I haven’t played video games since I was a kid. Fun.
Celebrate the small things
We did dry january, so had a big celebration on the 1st of Feb!
- party!!!
- disco lights
- lots of good music
- dressed up
- cook up - Thai style food
Facts
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
Huge numbers (up to 49k on average) of people got the virus recently. Hospitals have had a similar large influx of people as first lockdown. Deaths have been similar.
Currently (13th Feb 2021) there are
- 13.5m people who have had the 1st dose vaccination
- -1.5m have had the 2nd dose
Brewing Beer - new hobby
Everyone loves beer and I have lots of volunteers of people willing to help me drink it!
I’ve never tried brewing beer before. I wonder how hard can it be? As of writing I’ve got 1 more week to go before I can drink it!
Brewing beer blog is a blog I started to document it.
Work
Having a nice home office with plants, good monitors and keyboard.. all ready to go. You can see Ellie’s mac keyboard on the desk to the left.
We split each day between mornings and afternoons, then the following day the reverse. It is hard, but seems to work.
We agree a schedule each week and have a google shared calendar
In my job, I’ve been saying no to a lot of work as don’t have any bandwidth. It is very nice not to be overloaded. Then have some breathing space when things go wrong with kids etc.. (moodyness)
Nice Stuff
Get a weekend newspaper delivered!
Give your partner a lie in!
Read books - I like goodreads.com which helps recommend books too.
Meditate every day
Get outside every day
Have time for yourself every day with no pressure to do stuff.
Outro
Sometimes I wonder if one of the best things about lockdown is the forced simplicity of life.
Having time to play, explore, and not be rushing around all the time.
The amount of joy gained from picking up ice, smashing it, jumping on it.. is not to be underestimated :-)
Don’t Panic!
Take care xxx