Space Kitties Charter School Diary - Episode 4

Spring Break!!

There's a lot of bummers about living in COVID isolation, and cancelling our Spring Break mini-road trip is near the top of our list. As I saw this week approaching on the calendar I was kind of dreading it because it's hard enough to get my work done while the kids are (mostly) occupied with school work. Without school work to keep them busy, I figured it was just a disaster waiting to happen. Bored kids. Distracted mom. No play dates or road trips. Ugh. We needed SOMETHING special to distinguish this week from every other week stuck at home, so I came up with two low-budget, easy ideas to spice things up a bit. First: Nightly theme meals. Second: A jar of Spring Break Surprises. None of this is Pinterest-worthy, but I think it's safe to say it made the days pass less painfully and actually made things a little bit fun.

Monday:
Spring Break Surprise: Color-by-number drawing sheets. Remember how I mentioned this wasn't exactly Pinterest worthy? It's not. But it does bring to mind an ancient marketing secret. It's all in the presentation. If I had suggested we print a color-by-number sheet off the internet, they probably would have rolled their eyes and said, "That's boring." However, when I print off the coloring sheet in secret, roll it up, tie it with a ribbon and place it in a jar marked "Spring Break Surprises", it suddenly becomes remarkably fun.

Dinner Theme: Backwards! We wore our clothing backwards, turned our chairs around backwards at the table, and ate dessert first. The "dessert first" part was my secret ploy to get them to love the theme dinner idea, and I have to say it worked. They were lukewarm on the whole thing until I brought out chocolate chip cookies and insisted they eat them first. There is keen anticipation for tomorrow's theme dinner.

Tuesday:
Spring Break Surprise: I printed instructions for a game called "Snowball" which involves tossing around a bunch of crumpled up balls of paper, and a few other rules that nobody bothered to read. They weren't having it. The instructions sat on the counter all day, waiting for someone to play.

Dinner Theme: Crazy hats! We did "snow-cial" distancing today and took a drive up to Bunny Flat to do some sledding. After a long drive and lots of fun in the fresh powder, this easy theme dinner was a great fit for our dinner of BBQ take-out.

Wednesday:
Spring Break Surprise: Today was the jackpot. They each got $20 to order something off of Amazon. I tossed this in the jar as a Hail Mary pass in case the Spring Break Surprise idea flopped. Surely they couldn't feign indifference at free money! Turns out they weren't as excited as I thought they would be. I mean, they didn't turn up their noses at online shopping, but there were no squeals of excitement. Sigh. It's hard to generate excitement in this house-bound life.

Dinner Theme: Pajama night! We actually did all manage to get dressed in real clothing today, and then had to change into PJ's for dinner (Pancakes and bacon!). Then we had to change back into our clothes for our scheduled grocery pick-up time slot from 7-8pm. As luck would have it, the grocery store computers all crashed and they were not able to fulfill our order. So tomorrow we'll be digging through the freezer and getting creative with our meal prep.

Thursday: 
Spring Break Surprise: Recipe for homemade play dough. By Thursday, the enthusiasm for the Spring Break Surprise jar was pretty weak. Around 4pm, I had to remind them they still had a surprise to pick for the day. They ended up getting excited about making play dough and figuring out which colors to mix together to make it purple. Can we count that as a science lesson?

Dinner Theme: Raccoon Night! Did anyone else have a Raccoon theme night at their house this week? No? Just us? Hmm. Well, if you want to re-create this gem at your house it's not about eating roadkill, as my kids feared. It's about eating like a raccoon. Raccoons don't have opposable thumbs, so you achieve this raccoon-like status by taping your thumbs to your palms. It's fun. And slightly ridiculous. I would suggest that you get all of your serving dishes to the table first before taping everyone's thumbs down. Managing hot pots of food sans thumbs is just an unnecessary layer of danger for the raccoon theme night.

Friday:
Spring Break Surprise: Some writing/letter game. Still sitting untouched on the counter

Dinner Theme: Formal Night! Of all the theme nights, this one garnered the least amount of enthusiasm. One kid was excited about an excuse to play around with make-up, and managed to put on a fancy-ish shirt. The other had to be bribed and threatened before he put on a shirt with a collar, and he only agreed to be fancy "from the waist up." Clearly living life via Zoom meetings is starting to affect how he relates to the world.

On Saturday night I asked the kids how they would rate their spring break on a scale from one to ten. One rated it an 8, the other said 9. I think that is pretty fantastic, given the circumstances, and the fact that they saw right through my feeble Spring Break Surprise efforts by day two. The theme dinners were definitely the fan favorite, and they are already hatching up ideas for future theme dinners. For the most part, I tend to be a "make the best of it" kind of mom, but even I was skeptical we could pull off a spring break rated 8 or above in the middle of a global pandemic.

I'm proud of my kids and their ability to adapt to disappointment after disappointment during this era of COVID. I'm proud of my low-budget creativity that produced some pretty fun results. And I continue to be grateful for good health, meaningful work, ample food, shelter and the blessing of living in the moment with these two little people that I love so much.

I know that so much of what we do as parents will be lost and forgotten in the dusty memory banks of our kids. But these simple joys will be indelible, even without spending a lot of money or traveling to exotic locations. I write these words as a reminder to myself for the days ahead, and to the future me in 2021 scrambling to make plans for the Best Spring Break Ever. Perhaps the Perfect 10 is within our grasp, and more simple to create than we ever imagined.

Clean hands. Open Hearts. Growing Minds.

Space Kitties signing off.

Home School Day: Spring Break!
Toilet paper inventory: 27 rolls (Thank you Costco and Susan Tieden!)
Wine on hand: 1 bottle
Crying fits: 2 (we had another one in there somewhere but I can't remember when or why)

Snow-cial Distancing.
Fresh powder, blue skies epic sledding.