Day 4 of quarantine and Elizabeth said to me today, “Quarantine is going pretty well”. She may feel differently after several months of this. For me, it has been rather nice not having the school drop-offs and pickups along with Highland Dance and everything else. I feel like I’ve adopted a slower pace and am going back to basics – making milk, making bread, trying not to waste any food …. all things I could and should (in the case of not wasting food) have been doing anyway.
I am incredibly impressed with what the children have accomplished this week. Both Ben and I are working full-time still so the kids have been very much self-guided. On their schedule, they’ve had time each day to work on a project which is something they could choose. Elizabeth has produced a newspaper called The Elizabeth Express and Daniel has created a game called Scratch Dragon and Bird.
In Daniel’s game, you are the bird and you have to avoid getting killed by the dragon and various other dangerous creatures as you progress to higher levels. The goal is to survive for 200 seconds. So far my record is 110 seconds. He’s done a terrific job in just a few days.
Elizabeth’s newspaper is brilliant and she writes incredibly well for a 10-year-old. She’s a prolific writer and I’ll be shocked if she hasn’t published a book by the end of all this.
We went for a walk around Duthie Park today – our allowed once-a-day outdoor exercise activity. There were other people there and everyone was very good about keeping at least 2m apart from each other. It’s fairly easy to do at a big open space like Duthie Park and in a city like Aberdeen which is really not very populous.
rachel.blog 
You’ve been… making milk? The mind boggles! … vegan milk, right?
Yep! I’ve been making almond milk. I couldn’t get the oat milk to taste that nice and the family didn’t like it but everyone likes the almond milk so that’s what I make now.
Glad to hear you’re all coping well in the lock down – I’m a work from home, home edding mum but the strangest thing I’m finding now is that there are no weekends anymore – I was really used to that pattern.
If you’re working from home then can’t you stop working on weekends? I still really value my weekends of not having to work even though I’m still at home. There are other things I like to do on weekends like gardening and cooking.
Hello 🙂 I used to work on Saturdays as a librarian in the local library, and would take the children with me and I never realised quite how much that was part of the rhythm of our weekends … I don’t think I gave much thought to how I was dividing up my week before either, so that’s one thing I’ve gained. Hope you are keeping safe and well Rachel x
Oh I see. That makes sense. We used to visit the library on Saturdays too.
Will Elizabeth allow you to take pics of her newspaper, and post it online (if it will be clear enough)? I’d love to see it.
You can download it. There’s a link in my post to the PDF file. Here it is – https://rachelsquirrel.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/the-elizabeth-express.pdf
Thanks – I didn’t look properly – duh!
I was thinking of a print newspaper -haha, showing my age, even though I read the news online!
Well we could print it out I suppose but then no one would be able to see it since we can’t go out anywhere 🙂
Elizabeth’s newspaper is really good! She has a great imagination, and can put it into story form, so I agree with you that she has a book in her sometime in the not too distant future. Either that, or she is a journo in the making. I loved the bit ” It is truly terrifying how dangerous cows can be when you give them a trident.”
Brilliant!! What imaginations, haven’t reached 200 yet though
I love everything about this. Physical education was one of the highlights of each school day. It was an opportunity to play with my students, and to show them that we could have fun, regardless of which team won.