Self Isolation With Kids. The world is under house arrest, aka social distancing because of the worldwide pandemic Convid-19, aka Corona Virus. No, not from drinking beer. Not the Chinese Flu. A very serious virus with no cure, no vaccine, that can infect anyone and is spreading worldwide rapidly. This week, I’ve been home with the kids as schools and day cares are closed. I’m supposed to be working, but it’s tough when I have uninvited guests bursting into my video meetings asking for snacks, or making funny faces at the camera. Thankfully, everyone is in the same boat and is very forgiving.
Day 4 of our self isolation with the kids I’ve learned to work around them, not the other way around. As an only parent, I don’t have the luxury of splitting kid-minding time with another, so I’ve been learning how to adapt. I’ve tried to organize my meetings in clusters so I can have some solid focus time, and then the kids know that I’ll spend a chunk of time with them next. I also took the kids for a walk the previous day to the dollar store to stock up on crafts and activity supplies. Today, I brought them out.
Use small melty beads to create a Pokemon Ball
Knight has been struggling with fine motor control, namely with writing skills. He’s recently been using pencil grips and guided paper to help him control his writing. He loves playing with these melty beads and concentrates so hard to get things perfect. And I mean perfect. If the beads move out of their spots, he becomes frustrated and bangs the table, which makes the whole piece shake….which loses more beads. Catastrophe.
However, after mommy stepped in and helped him fix his project, he was so very proud of himself. Next learning curve: moving your fragile art project to a location that isn’t a high traffic area. Sigh. Work in progress.
Foam Bubbles
What kid doesn’t like bubbles?? I needed something to occupy the kids as they were BORED. Out of school and out of routine was really kicking in at this point, We had an empty soda bottle, which I grabbed the inspiration from. Yeah, STEM!
It was really simple, taking just 10 minutes with stuff you can find around the house. Didn’t even need glycerin. The bubbles stayed intact enough to make looong multi-bubble snakes.
- one empty soda bottle
- an old pair of nylon stockings
- an elastic (optional)
- scissors
- 2 Tbsp Dawn liquid dish soap (no other dish soap will work as well)
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 4 Tbsp water
- Cut off the bottom of the soda bottle. Put it aside in your craft supplies for later projects. Keep the upper half.
- Grab the foot end of the nylons and measure 4-5 inches up the leg. Snip it off.
- Put the nylon foot over the wide end of the soda bottle. Try to get the nylon taunt over the opening. Secure with the elastic. (We didn’t use an elastic and just pulled the nylon tight each time we used it.)
- Mix the Dawn, sugar and water in a shallow dish. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
- Dip the nylon end of the bottle into the bubble mixture, let the excess drip off.
- Blow into the mouthpiece of the bottle and observe the foam bubbles appear!
It really was a fun project that was so easy to put together. I would just recommend that you play with your bubbles outside. Bubble mixture on linoleum is really slippery! And it was a pain to mop up as it kept spreading tiny bubbles all over the place.
Handcrafted Churros
At this point, it was a couple of hours after noon, and we were getting munchy. Knight insisted on recreating a cooking video he found on TikTok. As much as I’m not entirely convinced that TikTok is the best medium for him, I am excited that he was excited to cook! I’ve never had a churro before so I had no idea what it was going to taste like. This was also my first time deep frying anything, so I was tremulous!
Both Knight and I tasted the batter, and were underwhelmed but continued the experiment. It turned out so well! And delicious! You can read the recipe here.
I have a question for you out there – what do you do with the leftover oil? I’ve saved it, but again as this is the first time I’ve deep fried anything, I’m at a loss of what to do with it. Help! Comment below with your ideas!