With her 7- and 11-year-old sons home from school until at least April 6, Julie Fievet is working with them on educational projects emailed by their teachers from Hawthorn School District 73.
But the Fievet family, which lives in Vernon Hills, also is taking time off from the rigors of learning.
“We’ve done a lot of movement breaks,” said Fievet, a physical education teacher at a Libertyville grade school, which is closed like all Lake County schools due to COVID-19. “We’re riding bikes. We’re taking the dog on walks. If I don’t keep them moving, it definitely makes it a little harder,” Fievet said. “We need to get some sunshine on our faces.”
Most Lake County schools began announcing closures a week ago, before Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered all K-12 schools closed until at least March 30, though some schools have said they’ll stay shut longer.
Since then, restrictions have tightened further and the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has climbed, hitting 422 statewide and 38 in Lake County as of Thursday afternoon. Four of those patients have died.
Lake County’s cases now include a College of Lake County employee, the college announced Thursday afternoon. The employee works in the L Building on the Grayslake campus and was last on campus March 12. He is at home in self-quarantine.
The college is working with its health center and the the Lake County Health Department on how those potentially impacted will be contacted and assisted, according to a Facebook post.
Fievet said, “Just thinking we’re all trapped is not going to be good for our mental health. I’m not doing play dates. We wave to people across the street. We are maintaining our distance. But being a PE teacher, I know movement is good. We are making sure to get outside even if it’s cold or raining.”
Her approach makes sense to Grayslake mom Hyacynth Worth, who homeschooled her two sons for several years when they were in primary school. Now, she, her husband, John, and their five children –ages newborn to 19 — are all at home. John is working from home and their children are home because school is canceled.
The Worth family has decided to have lunch and dinner together every day while they’re all at home. “Those times are meant to be able to laugh together, and to hear each other’s anxieties and frustrations,” Worth said.
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“There’s definitely frustration, and there’s hardship because we are people who are meant for relationships and friendships. It’s hard not to be able go and be with the people we care about outside the house. There’s understanding. There’s sadness. It runs the whole gamut of emotions,” Worth said.
“The teacher in me loves to have a schedule and everything mapped out, and I love to have a plan, but there’s a part of me that realizes that this is a really tough situation for kids and everybody at home. We need more relationship connections as opposed to focusing on educational things. I’m trying to strike a nice balance, even if it doesn’t always happen” she said.
“We need some lightheartedness, too,” she added, saying next on the agenda could be watching funny cat videos.
Fievet said she is grateful for what’s being sent home from school via the computer for her children to do. The school’s website has a link for various grade levels and includes activities they can choose to do including in math, English and the creative arts.
Her younger son took speech therapy at school. His speech teacher sent a video reminding him how to work on different sounds, Fievet said.
Balancing schoolwork and play
Though she’s happy for those opportunities, she said, “I’m not going to stress about getting everything done. It’s not realistic to have a seven-hour school day. I also don’t want to have a seven-hour I-pad day either.”
She said she’s discovered some fun on-line learning and creative opportunities. For example, an online video features illustrator Mo Willems demonstrating ways to draw animals such as pigeons.
Worth offered some suggestions on working with children on school subjects at home. Cooking can help with math, she said. “That’s a really great way to give visuals to fractions,” she said, for example, using a cup of flour and a half cup of milk in a recipe.
She’s encouraging her 18- and 19-year-old daughters to watch a program of their choice and then talk and write about it. She’s encouraging her younger children to read a book, then draw one of the characters and write what they think the characters are feeling.
“This (situation with children not in school and parents working from home) could go on for a while,” she said. Worth said it’s important to remember that, “It’s not all puppy dogs and rainbows. Sometimes we have a hard time around the dinner table. And that’s OK.
“There are really creative ways to learn that don’t exactly look like the traditional classroom,” she added. “It’s a really good time to watch things bloom, and talk about how seasons change. There’s so much you can do depending on your children’s ages.
Counting shamrocks, smiley faces in neighborhood
The Fievet family and their neighbors have created a weekly activity all can participate in from a distance. On St. Patrick’s Day, they came up with the idea of drawing a shamrock and printing it out and putting it on your window. “Our neighborhood really latched on to that,” said Fievet, who follows a neighborhood Facebook page.
Families could keep their distance but walk around the neighborhood or ride bikes and see how many shamrocks they could find. “On St. Patrick’s Day, there were a bunch of kids, families walking around, maintaining their distance while counting different shamrocks. We’d call across the street, ‘How many did you find?’ One man had a sport coat with shamrocks hanging on his door. Another kid made a poster with 65 shamrocks,” she said.
The neighborhood plans to do the same activity weekly with different themes. Friday begins the smiley face series, followed by animals, encouraging words, flowers and on April 1, jokes. “We’ve decided this is what we will focus on for the kids for fun,” Fievet said. “We will possibly do some video chats or virtual flamingos, so we are going to stay social while being cooped up.”
Older adults whose children are grown and living elsewhere have found ways to keep occupied as well. Linda Togliatti of Lake Villa said she is in an age group that prompted her to self-quarantine.
“I’m going to spend this month sharing the signs of spring as I find them,” she said. She’s posting her daily spring journal on Facebook. “Daffodils, maple tree buds, crocus, chives, magnolia buds bring new signs of spring,” Togliatti said.
She added, “It’s a great project for kids to take nature pictures too.”
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.