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Connections

Little Hermits

The most challenging part of social distancing has been the inability to keep our kids connected with their friends. At 7 and 5, M and L have not yet mastered phone conversations. The few FaceTime calls we have had have been more random craziness than connecting. How do you teach phone conversations in a world where texting is king? They most certainly know how to send emojis! M's call with G from school primarily consisted of showing of different toys and rocks. L's call with W was just full of silly faces and nonsense language. Both ended with me having a longer conversation with their moms. 

Enter "Little Hermits with Fr. Benjamin"! Today, fourteen families joined a Zoom call to listen to a story of St. Romanos and sing songs with Fr. Ben. It was hilarious! Thank goodness for muting the audience. M discovered you could change the background and we ended up on a beach. It was so good to see our friends, including the Ealys from Ohio! Not only did it keep my kids busy for almost 30 minutes, but they connected with their church family. This will be added to the schedule every MWF!



Parent Connections

But social time isn't just for the kids. How do WE stay connected with our friends? In case you didn't know, I'm a bit of a social butterfly. I love to be involved in regularly have a full schedule. This keeping in has been good for me to slow my life down. But I still miss talking to my friends. And I prefer talking to texting. So, I set up a Zoom happy hour with the girls. We watched R make dinner and I envied her cooking skills. I had a Shakeology shake and roasted asparagus. The boys had pizza. I saw a meme that said something about how everyone will exit their quarantine with an immaculate house, master chef skills or a new talent. Definitely not the first two for me. Does writing this blog count as the talent? 😆 

Back to connecting to friends. I'm trying to find ways to connect to old and new friends. I want to start writing letters and setting up more Zoom connections. Send me a message if you want to connect sometime!

Learning Chess - Game Anyone?


The one talent the boys are learning are new games! M is working on his chess skills and the past couple days has been trying to teach L. It's slow with a lot of exasperated complaining of illegal moves. Today I was watching them and M was copying every move that L was making and really getting under his skin. But it is great seeing them play together.

Other games we have been playing are Monopoly, Uno, Sequence. I want to try to get a Zoom game night with friends. I think chess or Monopoly could be played that way. Battleship? We have to find ways to reach out to one another!

Tomorrow's Schedule

The CILC Classes this morning were a hit and we are signed up for TWO WEEKS for free! This took up a full hour and a half with little interruption from the boys. We hooked the laptop up to the TV and the boys sat and watched on the couch/laid on the floor. The last class had an art project that needed a little help. Each class was 30 minutes and took place at different locations. They learned about Sharks at the Texas State Aquarium, Dolphins at the Mote Marine Laboratory, and listened to Anansi's Hot Bean Soup and made a paper spider. Tomorrow is a STEM Day. If they can spend 1.5 hours listening to someone else teach them, I'll take it. Forget that it's screen time!

Also working is mandatory 30 minutes reading time after lunch. M is reading like crazy. He'll have to start books over or we will need to do digital books (more screen time 😩) if the libraries remain closed. 

We had Pajama Day today. Tomorrow is Crazy Sock Day. Not sure what this will get them, but they WILL get out of their pajamas first thing in the morning. Right?




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