Isolation Imagination: Fun things to do with your family during shutdown (Part 1)
Suffering from COVID fatigue? It’s definitely real. Where we live, we have been in shutdown since March; offices and restaurants are closed, everything is virtual, people are masked, distancing, and avoiding groups and crowds. The first few weeks, we went from watching a lot of TV and relaxing to saying “now I finally have the time to… [insert thing you wanted to do but never got around to here].” And then we got the news that this shutdown was going to last an awful lot longer than the amount of time it took to bake macaroons, reseed our grass, clean our curtains, redo our kitchen, etc. And most people I know are now running out of new ideas for safe ways to have fun. Doing new things, getting to learn, and finding ways to be social are almost as important to us all as staying physically healthy and safe. These things are especially important for children and their long-term development (read more about that here).
So, to help encourage us to keep up our strength in these times of isolation while still meeting our basic social and intellectual needs, we’ve written the multi-part series Isolation Imagination. In Isolation Imagination we will share some of the fun new things we have tried and loved, in case you and the kids in your life want to try them too!
Oyster Shucking and Shell Painting
In the last few years, I’ve learned to love oysters. But since we haven’t been eating out due to the shutdown, I have not been indulging in my occasional shellfish splurge. With the usual oyster-eating season ending, I finally realized that fancy restaurants and beach bars were not the only places I could enjoy a good half-shell, and decided to get some live oysters and learn to do my own shucking!
We met friends in a big open-air park, sat at separate (read: more than 6 ft apart) picnic tables facing one another, laid out our table cloth and spread, and started shucking! We had a few laughs as we figured out the best way to safely use a shucking knife (with cut resistant gloves AND dishcloths), but soon we were off to the races! While the adults shucked and enjoyed oysters, kids enjoyed climbing trees around us, kicking a ball around in the grass, and watching the airplanes fly over the park.
After we deep cleaned and boiled our leftover oyster shells (at least the ones that weren’t broken in the learning process!), we let them dry thoroughly. Once dried, we had a new fun activity for adults and kids: shell painting!
We used acrylic paint, fine tip paintbrushes, and acrylic spray gloss finish (after the masterpieces had completely dried). Then we used a super-fine drill bit to make a tiny hole in the thickest part of the top of the shell, and threaded some wire through it to make the painted seashells into ornaments!
Bike Rides and “Favorite House of the Day” Awards
During shutdown, it has been pretty easy to get stagnant and lethargic. So, to get ourselves moving and active again, we challenged ourselves to go for a bike ride every other morning before getting to work. Having the fresh air and (hopefully) sunshine in our faces was been a nice way to ease into days at home.
After going down usual streets in the neighborhood for a little while, we started needing a change of scenery. So we started picking random new streets to bike down. We found cute little places we had never really noticed before, and tried hard to go down different streets every day! We started finding favorite houses on these streets and wished we could tell our neighbors that something about seeing their home in the morning brightened our day. Sometimes it was a particularly pretty tree, or a flowering bush, some festive seasonal decor, or a fresh coat of paint, and it would become our favorite house of the day.
We decided we wanted to tell our neighbors that they brightened our days with their homes, and so created a “Favorite House of the Day” award. To do that, we wrote a little note on our computer, added in a drawing, and printed out copies to drop off at our favorite house each day. Hopefully we put a smile on a few faces (besides our own)!
Next time in Isolation Imagination: Quar-o-ween & socially distant spooks!
