And it really wasn't all bad. I know we fared pretty well given that both Steve and I continued working, while others around us had hours cut and jobs lost. Our girls are old enough to amuse themselves and adventure together, so they weren't under our feet demanding to be entertained. The unbearable heat of Brisbane summer had given way to cooler days which were prefect for pretty much everything. I know having an education background also helped me deal with the reality of home schooling, while others around us tore their hair out at the thought.
It wasn't all sunshine and happiness, but overall there was just a lot of good times. The uncertainty we are feeling now as we wait for the contact tracing and test results of thousands of people around the city to see if the latest outbreak will be contained is pretty daunting though. Perhaps it was naive to think that we could ride it out, once that the initial outbreak had been quelled, just by keeping our distance and washing our hands really well for the next year or two. It's hard not to instantly give in to the doom of another wave, of exponential spread, lockdowns and unkowns.
So here I am. Looking back on the highlights of the First Wave. The "What we did in Iso" as it were. I hope you enjoy this too, people of the internet, and that it reminds you too; it's not all bad.
Since I was home schooling anyway, I decided now was the time to really invest in the girls Japanese learning, so I taught them their hiragana. We also did various random vocab words, sang Japanese songs and read Japanese books. But a dedicated part of each morning's "school work" was Japanese focused hiragana. I'm actually so thankful for that opportunity, because I might never have thought to do it otherwise.
Part of the girls school work was story telling, so we made puppets and drew a background and wrote stories to act out. Such an easy way to make literacy fun, and involve lots of fine motor skills, recycling principles, creativity and imagination.
Drawing around shadows of various toys (mostly dinosaurs). This is maths, because then we measured them and graphed them. Also good for hand coordination and strength. Sorry, my educational background is really showing off here.
I had seen these butterfly wings scrolling through Pintrest one time and tucked it away for "one day". That day was now. I had lighting gels from Reverse Garbage on hand from another kids activity that I'd taken to play group and I made the black outline shapes by painting pages from an old calender one of the playgroup ladies had given me.
The girls glued the colours on and then we laminated them for stability. They look pretty magnificent in the sun.
The girls played with boxes. A lot of boxes. I don't know why Rachel is making the face she is making in that picture. We also built a lot of cubbies. And a tree house, but you know about that already.
Easter rolled around and we made an Easter Garden, thanks to one of the lovely ladies from church dropping us the stuff we needed. I did lots of sewing (here and here) and cutting of fabric just for the sake of cutting fabric I think, and to give me something to do, rather than think about the "what if's".
We went camping in the backyard. Gosh this was fun. Someone in our community was giving away their enormous 12-man tent earlier in the year and we had been lucky enough to nab it. Given all the time we had around the house on the weekends, and over the Easter break, we decided to set it up to see how it went together. The girls slept out there for two nights, I did one with them, but it was super windy and the tree house is very noisy when it is getting blown around.
And what is a tent in the backyard with out a little campfire to go with it? We have since found out that our little fire-in-a-wok to cook marshmallows was not exactly legal, so we won't be doing it again, but it was fun for the couple of nights that we did do it.
See that photo in black and white along with a ramble about photo challenges and other photos that show things we did during iso in this post here.
We played games. Some more interesting than others. Lots of games of Spot It and Sleeping Queens, but also King of Tokyo and Carcassonne.
Sophie learnt to ride her two wheel bike at our local netball courts. I will be honest, I never thought it would happen, so I'm so thankful that COVID-19 gave us the time and space to do it. It is still amazing for her to have that much more freedom, her world just got bigger. We spent so much time at those netball courts actually, and still do. I almost hope that no one ever decides to refurbish them and use them for anything else.
We were out most days, either on wheels or walking. Lots of walks around the neighbourhood. People had chalk out everywhere and just down the road from us were people arty enough to pull off some fun Bluey characters on their footpath which were pretty impressive.
I did lots of face painting, and we watched musicals with the girls. Most notably, The Phantom of the Opera, which was a bit of a milestone I guess. Phantom was the first musical I saw live at QPAC when I was only six years old. I know the soundtrack by heart. Even though we weren't seeing it live, it was great to be able to share it with the girls. They both thought it was too dramatic.
I learnt to make origami elephants. Because, why not? We also did lots of cooking, reading and gardening.
So it's not all bad. And if it happens again, we will survive it too, just like we survived the first time round. Hang in there people.
And wash your hands.
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