Brütten Rocks!

To help alleviate the boredom during lockdown we have begun a painted stone trail around the village. To start, my youngest daughter and I found a selection of interesting stones which we have hoarded from various beaches across the globe over the years. We scrubbed them throroughly and got our acrylic paints together. Then we took a long hard look at each shape before painting to see what each would reveal in the way of ideas. One of them revealed a seated polar bear, which is definitely our favourite!  I'm very excited about children finding and enjoying these and hope the stone trail will grow in the village with additions from other sources.

Participants can post their finds on my Brütten Rocks FB page here.

Postcards with love

It has taken a long time to get my head round the whole Coronavirus Lockdown thing and now, three weeks into it, I am finally feeling a little more relaxed about it all (with a gargantuan effort) However, it seems the local schools were extremely well prepared from the off.

The Friday before Lockdown, the girls came home with their school iPads and a load of books and on the Sunday night before their first day of online school, we had emails, with a detailed schedule for my 13-year-old secondary school daughter. This schedule involved days beginning online at 08:30 and finishing between 16:30 and 17:30. My Mittelstufe 10-year-old daughter had a more relaxed schedule, with a list of work needing to be completed each day by herself but which involved online work and online messaging with her other classmates.

But the very best thing was a delivery on the first week from school into our mailbox of 20 franked postcards. Every week, each child is given the name of another classmate to whom they must write a little positive letter. She loves looking for her postcards each week and reading them. She keeps them in pride of place on her wall, in a growing collection of positivity.

I thought this is a wonderful way of connecting the children during quarantine. We have also done cards for family in the UK and on Monday I sent two parcels to a friend in Switzerland who is really struggling to work from home with her little ones onboard. They were just parcels made up of things my children have grown out with, including a Wallace & Gromit DVD, which I know they will love. She sent me a gorgeous little video message with their glowing faces and thank yous.

As well as Facetime and Zoom apps perhaps we can also return to snail mail at this time. It’s such a lovely way to keep in touch and there is nothing better than getting a personal letter or little package in the post. My children love it – even my normally moody 13-year-old can’t resist her pleasure at receiving post.

So yes, I’m still struggling with this weird Coronavirus twilight world we’re living in but focusing on small details of love is helping enormously.