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Week Two of the Quarantine. St. Timothy's is ready to go with virtual schooling. Over the weekend they send out detailed instructions for schedules, curricula, technology, you name it. They had a plan. This in stark contrast to our friends in Wake County schools. For the remainder of the school year, they would not have a consistent learning plan for all their students.
Clara would begin each day at 8am with her chromebook on the kitchen table, ready to Zoom with her teacher and classmates.
County and state orders came out this week, too. All of North Carolina was required to shelter-in-place. You're only supposed to go out to exercise, get groceries, or attend to a medical need. Even for kids, that meant no socializing. So we made do, and the kids began to have playdates (of sorts) using Zoom, too.
Hattie set up her classroom in her bedroom and used Kate's iPad.
There were other adjustments to make to everyday life. Trader Joe's started enforcing social distancing, continuing to allow people in the store but wiping down every cart and requiring six feet between all shoppers. Below is Kate standing in a line that wraps around outside the store, taking 45 minutes before she could get in. And, for some strange reason every national emergency brings its own peculiarities. For covid-19, toilet paper became scarce. Folks were going into stores and buying it all up. Why? Because humans are strange creatures.
Kate adapted the family to the new routine, keeping the girls outside as much as possible with bike trips for PE class.
Slip-and-slide for recess.
Soccer was canceled, too. So the Spirit and Dragons each got one game before the season would end. But Clara continued soccer drills in the front yard.
One fun thing about quarantine is that the girls got deep into project mode. Boredom leads to exploration. Clara spent one afternoon making motivational prints on any surface she could find. She wanted to give these to residents of the Cardinal, a retirement community behind us. For contagion fears, they were in lock-down mode and wouldn't accept gifts, so Clara ended up giving the art to her teachers for teacher appreciation week.
We decided we wanted to go the beach and ride this out. But first we needed to distance ourselves and make sure we weren't bringing any virus down to Ga and Pappaw. So Paul came back home to work at the end of week two, sitting outside around the firepit when weather permitted (watching a redtail hawk on one sunny day).
And retreating to the guest room as a makeshift office as circumstances required. (Thank you Hattie for donating the spare lego bin for Paul's standing desk.)
