Life in the time of COVID19 has been, well, not drastically different for us pigs. Our school went on spring break and never returned. Our one-day-a-week, in-person school, we should clarify. But our school-at-home didn’t miss a beat. We’ve moved onto a less structured school day, as we’ve all summer long to get through this academic year (spoiler alert: almost all of our summer camps have been cancelled), but we keep on keeping on. How, you ask? Let us expand…
Our school workbooks aside (we still have to complete those), we have chosen a project for the summer: A Timeline. We started it in the basement at our new place (Did we mention we moved? More on that in a bit…), and we began with time periods we were interested in. Asher chose the Mesozoic Era, Emmett chose the Space Age, Riley chose Westward Expansion (he’s angling to get into the facts surrounding the Donner Party), and Tessa chose the Renaissance. We put those time periods on the time line, complete with labels and string, and now we are doing a deep dive into those periods, researching, learning more, and then adding more details to the timeline. Once we feel we’ve enough information about a particular time period, we move on. The coolest part is we built our own time machine out of cardboard boxes and blankets, and every time we do our research, we hop in the time machine first. So much spacetime to discover!
We’ve been on a bunch of virtual field trips through History Colorado (the Colorado History Museum, for those of you not in-the-know) and we’ve added those to the timeline too. The Chicano Movement (Emmett added his poster detailing who he chooses to be and what he chooses to stand for), Women’s Rights (we added a label showing that women in CO got the vote a full 27 years before the US ratified the 19th Amendment), Colorado geography (Tessa added the CO map she made)–so far, we’ve loved our Zoom field trips around the state to study our local history. We’ve also discovered some new hiking and camping ideas by participating. Perfect!
Our new house really lends itself to stay-at-home and social distancing. We moved because we decided that the house we were in wasn’t going to work for us long term. We needed a home set up for 6 people, with more separate indoor spaces (our old house had one huge room on the first floor and no basement), and a younger neighborhood population (there were no kids our age in the old neighborhood). We are happy to report we are enjoying our new basement a TON! Riley and Asher have their room downstairs and they love being separated a bit from Tessa and Emmett, who are on the second floor with Mom and Dad. Our basement also has our TV and the Lego table. Now, we get to have family movie night in the basement, like it’s a movie theater, and Lego building doesn’t end up with Lego’s taking over the entire first floor. This space also allows for everyone to play without so many fights for space. There’s a loft upstairs too, but we don’t use that too much. It’s there, though, should we choose to hang out there!
Also, there are a ton of parks and kids (so, so many kids) that even though we can’t get any closer than 6 feet, there’s still a lot of fun to be had biking, trading Pokeman cards, running through the sprinklers, playing Nerf guns, and playing dinosaur in these new outdoor spaces. It’s been a welcome change (which is good because at first we weren’t certain we’d made the right decision in moving out of our old home).
Riley dislocated his shoulder the weekend after we moved into the new house. (Of course you did, Riley.) But he was kind enough to reduce the dislocation all by himself while Mom and the ER doctor were discussing the xrays and how to go about getting the shoulder back into place. Thanks, Riley! He’s also now sporting a pair of orthotics for his flat, flat feet. The podiatrist took xrays (because Riley always needs more xrays) and said that when Riley’s feet were casted as a baby, it made him lose his arches. By wearing orthotics, he’s now attempting to rediscover those arches. The doctor is optimistic it will work. Stay tuned…
Emmett got an 80’s style Boom Box (with Bluetooth and CD capabilities), and he’s now spending a lot more time in his room listening to music and exploring Mom and Dad’s CD libraries. It’s perfect because he can listen to music without the screen of an iPod. He’s doing great with his weekly Zoom theater practice too. His Aladdin performance has been pushed back to the fall, but his singing voice is developing amazingly and we all know it’s going to be fantastic.
Asher is still a building machine. He’s so creative, building Lego Mandalorian and Clone Wars spaceships and speeders. He likes building kits, but he’s just as happy coming up with his own masterpieces. He’s also made a good friend next door, Jack. Asher and Jack are two peas in a pod. They both love dinosaurs, imaginative play, bubbles, and trucks. They have the same bike helmets, the same poster up in their rooms, and the same taste in games. Yay, Asher!
Tessa has been busy lately reading, reading, and more reading. It’s a good thing that our Tooth Fairy brings books and that everyone has been losing a ton of teeth lately, because our libraries are closed because of the pandemic. Without our thoughtful tooth fairy, Tessa would be doomed to reread for the fifth and sixth time all the books in our family library…
Going forward, we’ve still got some regular summer activities planned: Camping, hiking (We’ve already done a ton, check out the pictures!), and at least one summer camp called Ancestral Skills. We’ll weave our spacetime research and time traveling into that, add in biking to the neighborhood pizza place (for take out) and ice cream shop (for eating under a shady tree), and mix in a dash of whatever comes up–and we think that this summer is going to be a good one!
Check back soon,
The Pigs
OVERHEARD
“Uh, because I’m smart.
–Riley, answering Tessa’s question, “How do you know that you won’t confuse the two sticks once you put them into your pocket?”
“But you said I had freedom. You said I had free will. You tricked me!”
–Asher, upset that he had to stop building Legos to go and get his pajamas on.
“Yeah! I’ve got a good singing voice now…”
–Emmett, responding to Mom’s remark that she overheard E’s theater teacher telling him via Zoom that he’s going to steal the show with his amazing voice.
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