Week 3: not a fronted adverbial in sight!

The Horde have been on school holiday this week, and their Dad has been furloughed so this week has been a lot more relaxed – at least for them! I have still been working, but have been (mostly) able to do just one thing at once. I’m still focusing on the potential for makerspaces and project based learning, reading and thinking about what’s manageable and possible to test over the next couple of years.

There’s been a lot of meetings via MS Teams, and I am finding them more tiring than being in a room with all the same people. I mentioned this over on Twitter the other day, and some wise people shared their thoughts with me about the extra cognitive work your brain is having to do to remember you both are and aren’t in the same room as people. My sister shared this link with me, which was interesting. Both this one and another that our museum director shared liken what we are experiencing to trauma, and the stress of being in a situation out of our control. I think we are all also very aware that we don’t know how long this lockdown will go on for, and that there is so much uncertainty about what the ‘new normal’ might look like.

One Teams meeting was delightful, though – an end of week chat with two lovely colleagues over a virtual drink – there should be more of this, and it was good to have a conversation with other adults that didn’t come with an agenda…

Walk this way….

One of the ways I am managing my own mental health is to keep walking – on Tuesday I was so tired when I woke up that I didn’t start the day with a 6am ramble, and the impact on my mood was surprising.

Despite not being able to set my usual pace due to last weekend’s running injury, just that 45 minute walk has a calming effect across the whole day. It helps, of course, that we are in the countryside but even when working I try and get off the train a stop early and walk along the canal towpath to Victoria Park.

Slowing down to hobbling pace has also forced me to look around a bit more as I go! It was suggested the other day that this seems to be a bumper year for blackthorn (so we’ll be making sloe gin later!) and it’s true that the Common is white with blossom.

Thing 2 – an early riser like her mama – has joined me the last three days, and it’s been a time for her to ask big questions about the things that worry her, and for us to have some peaceful time together. She loves to spot animals, and was thrilled today to see a tiny mouse as we came back through the forest.

Holiday activities

The weather has continued to be most un-bank-holiday-ish, treating us to days of baking sunshine instead of the torrential downpours we usually associate with school holidays. My beloved has been working in the garden, planting all sorts of vegetables and pulling weeds out of the ground, and Thing 2 has been joining in. She has shown a lot of interest in germinating fruit seeds – actually googling how to do it properly rather than shoving them in some earth and hoping for the best which is my usual method. We have a set of little orange trees that are now about 6 inches high, and a few apples and a plum underway. Thing 3 helped make a rack to put seedlings in, having a go at sawing wood and helping screw things together. All the wood in the garage that my beloved kept in case it came in useful has – yes! – come in useful.

What’s Thing 1 been up to? She’s mostly been asleep, but she did let me cut her hair earlier this week – the thinking was that if I did a really bad job then lockdown means it has time to grow out. I can’t remember the last time she let me cut her fringe.

Once again there has been a lot of baking – the delight when I landed the last bag of flour in the Co-op was quite ridiculous. The highlight has been hot cross buns, of course, but we have also made rocky road cake, more flatbread and pancakes for breakfast.

My to-do list hasn’t seen much action, sadly, but I have cut out four sets of scrubs which will be going to a mental health trust in East London, and made up one of those sets.

Saturday was spent making ‘ear savers’ – the elasticated masks that medical staff wear hurt their ears as they are wearing them more often, so I whipped up some of these little gadgets and sent two dozen off to a friend who works in the maternity unit in our local hospital, for her to use and pass to her colleagues. They are super simple to make, and a good way to use up scraps. I won’t deny that an afternoon in the sunshine sewing buttons on was lovely, too…

I put a plea out on Facebook for anyone who had buttons to spare to share them with me so I could make more of these, and the response from both friends and people across the village was amazing. So many buttons – people were going through their button boxes and popping them through my letterbox all day!

I have booked this week off, and am looking forward to spending some relaxing time with my family, pottering about and making things. Hopefully you all have something nice planned for the bank holiday at home!

See you at the end of week (signing off just as another package of buttons have arrived….)

Kirsty x

Week two: reality bites

Here we are at the end of week two, and cabin fever hasn’t quite set in yet – though I think the novelty of being at home has definitely worn off for the Horde. They are missing their friends, especially as we can see and hear some of them over the garden between us, and they are used to being in and out of each other’s houses. Limiting screen and chat time is frustrating for 13-year-old Thing 1, too, as she is used to working with her friends at school.

I – like so many other parents at the moment – have a renewed respect for teachers (and I used to be one!). In my case, it’s down to the really hard sums and various parts of speech that Thing 2, in Year 6, is expected to know. I got 1% on a fractions test in Year 7 and my relationship with them hasn’t improved over the years, so to be confronted with ratios and lowest common denominators and so on was a bit of a shock to the system. We muddled through, I think.

I have kept to my 7 – 2 working pattern, apart from the odd afternoon meeting (Thing 2: “They aren’t the people you usually talk to! Do you even know them?” – at least the internet safety chat has sunk in) which gave us the chance to try some new recipes. Thing 1 made gnocchi for lunch one day, Thing 2 made chicken, mozzarella and pesto filo parcels, and Thing 3 made cornflake cakes. 1 and 2 managed to make bread together one afternoon without all-out combat, and we tried making flatbread to go with meatballs too. I convinced them to eat cauliflower (#winning). All three of them have been painting, helping their dad in the garden (I think he is hiding from the chaos) and enjoying the sunshine.

Thing 2 and her latest creation – a gift for her nephew

When not negotiating tricky fractions or the perfect tense, I have been exploring the value of makerspaces for children as a way to increase their creative confidence – one book, The Nerdy Teacher Presents: Your Starter Guide to Makerspaces by Nicholas Provenzano, had me thinking about the potential for this way of learning as part of the planned school residency. It also has AWESOME geeky pop culture references.

As someone who was always encouraged to try things, to potter about as my dad built stuff in the garage, I think opportunities to make – to make things, to make mistakes, to go back and explore what you did wrong – are vital to children’s development and the growth mindset that’s so important to making it as a human being in the 21st century. It’s not something that can be tested in a SAT at Y6, for example, although project outcomes can be, so allowing children to fail has been off the agenda – children have been spoonfed knowledge and test content, which is great for school league tables but hasn’t done a lot for the children themselves. Project based learning is definitely on my mental agenda at this point, and how that can be condensed into a museum context, when our time with the students is limited.

Easter holidays start now

As the head of this here school, I declared an Inset Day on Friday so we started our break a day early.

Part of the reason for this was for the sake of all our mental health. Thing 3 has been quite unsettled, sleeping badly and having nightmares, which – as a very pragmatic little soul from the day he arrived – is very out of character. I also had a very bad day on Tuesday: one of the worst I have had for a while, with high anxiety levels and very low mood.

I am missing my daily commute: for me, this was a decompression between work and home, a chance to stop being ‘work me’ and be ready to be ‘mum me’. That hour of audio books or music and crochet makes a huge difference to my mental state. I’m usually pretty good at multi-tasking, but trying to be both my ‘selves’ at once is proving challenging at times. Still, no more SPAG and maths for a couple of weeks!

And hey, who am I kidding – I miss being in work as much as the kids being in school. I love my team, and the office dynamic – having people to throw ideas around with, chats over boiling kettles and seeing all our lovely visitors. I get great joy from my work – interacting with teachers and children, seeing the wonder on the faces of our smallest visitors. Although the Teams app and Zoom are good for seeing faces, the spontaneity isn’t there. It’s been lovely to have the odd chat with colleagues which didn’t come with an agenda, and I definitely feel the lack of the lunchtime walks to Victoria Park to see the dogs and ducks.

It’s hard not being able to see friends, too – the other people in the village, and also my nurse friends who are on the frontline at the moment. One lost a colleague to Covid-19 this week, and we can’t reach out and cocoon her. She is quite naturally angry that people are ignoring the rules – the scenes in Epping Forest and other parks this weekend have proved that people are not taking this crisis seriously. My parents, in France, are in full lockdown and I wonder how long it will be before that has to happen here too – 90% co-operation and 10% enforcement doesn’t seem to be working.

I am still running (or I was until my Achilles tendon did something odd yesterday at mile 3) but going out at 6am, when the only people I am likely to encounter are distant dog walkers. I see a lot of rabbits, too, and was lucky enough on Monday to spot a herd of about 30 deer grazing on the common.

How’s that to-do list coming on then?

It’s actually been quite a productive week!

Today I spent a few hours in my shed, sorting through fabric remnants – a lot of cotton left over from various projects was donated to a woman in the village who is making fabric masks. She is not charging for them, other than to cover materials. I know they have been in demand, so the fabric has gone to a good home (along with some sewing patterns I know I won’t use!). Some yarn also made its way down the road to a friend’s daughter who has caught the crochet bug.

I’ve managed to tick two things off last week’s list! One, the purple jacket, only took about an hour’s work so I have had no excuse not to finish it before. I am not sure I followed the pattern instructions but it looks OK, so I am happy.

The purple jacket – Patterns by Gertie for Butterick.
Purple gabardine lined with taffeta – it’s sooooo soft.

The second finish was the Attic Windows quilt. I wanted to back it with a red fabric as a contrast to the navy, but couldn’t get enough as there has been a run on polycotton fabrics for hospital scrubs (I have signed up to make some for one of the local trusts, who are desperately short of them – one of my nursey friends tagged me in a Facebook post, and today I washed and dried lots of fabric so I can get started in the afternoons this week). Where was I? Oh yes.

I decided to add a border of red rectangles to get the contrast, and then repurposed one of the kids’ old duvet covers to make the back. I cut it in half and then turned one piece through 90 degrees and stitched them together to get enough width. I also added applique cats – they look quite small at the bottom of the quilt, but the perspective of the night sky is probably what the world looks like to cats anyway, or so I like to think!

Another project that shouldn’t have taken as long as it did! The first 25 blocks were hand sewn on the Central Line, which started a lot of conversations, and then a woman in a quilting fabric shop told me I was doing it all wrong, so I felt all disillusioned and put it away. For 12 years. The other 35 blocks were machine sewn last week, as they were all cut out, and I can’t tell which ones are which for the life of me from the front. So, nuts to you, lady in the quilting cotton shop.

The finished quilt has been submitted for inclusion in a book about making at home during the lockdown (more here: https://wideopensea.co.uk/athome/). It’s not perfect and I now see why you start quilting from the middle, but I am happy with it – I am also happy that the process of this caused Thing 2 to want to learn to sew.

Because it’s totally impossible not to start new projects, as well as signing up to make scrubs I also put together another quilt top – only to use up the squares, honest!

I’ll also be making a few of the Frontline Hero bears for some friends, I think.

And that’s it from me for the week – here’s Bailey, doing what cats do best. Same time next week!

Kirsty x

In which we survive week one (with a few adjustments)

A week which progressed rapidly from ‘social isolation’ to semi-lockdown! A week which is showing the very best of people as they band together to ensure neighbours and friends are safe, sharing resources, running errands and painting rainbows for their windows for families on walks to spot. Also, the first week when we’ve all been at home together…

The kids’ schools have been great, posting work via the Milk and Parentmail platforms, and sharing messages via Class Dojo. Thing 2 was particularly pleased to be awarded five Dojos for her art work on Friday.

Woven fabric shield – using up my stash!

I’ve been quite clear that what’s happening here is not home schooling or home educating – those are choices made by parents for a range of reasons, while the current situation is driven by necessity – but like a lot of parents I started the week with a timetable of sorts. Admittedly mine was fairly basic, comprising ‘school stuff’ in the mornings and ‘creative stuff’ in the afternoon, but even that turned out to be challenging at times. My own work schedule has settled into a 7-2 pattern, which means that by the time the Horde are getting restless I am ready to finish too. It suits me – I’m very much a morning person!

Thing 1 has been pretty independent, working through the home learning set without much input from me. This week should have seen her choosing her GCSE options – luckily she’s quite clear about what she wants to do. The Milk app has crashed repeatedly over the week due to the level of demand, but she’s working on her French daily.

Thing 3 loves maths and would focus all his time on those if he could, so we have started each day with handwriting tasks based on the statutory spelling words for his year group – this is more of a challenge for me, as I have had to model the correct formation and as anyone who has tried to decipher my meeting notes will tell you, my handwriting is truly atrocious.

A lot has been written on various satirical mum blogs about the KS2 literacy curriculum – particularly on the demands of SPAG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) – and it turns out they weren’t exaggerating. Most of my support for Thing 2 this week has involved Googling grammar so I could help her. I’m not sure I could pass a KS2 SATs paper these days.

The afternoons have been an utter joy though, seeing them finding creative ways to fill their time. The Boy has played with a lot of Lego, swept out the treehouse (which the three of them designed collaboratively a few years ago) and on Friday he planned and made some shelves. Careful diagrams led to measuring, cutting and building with Dad’s help, and he’s very proud of his new furniture – like most of the treehouse, it’s been upcycled from other furniture.

We’ve also had delicious chocolate cake made to a foolproof recipe courtesy of my Aunty Jan, flapjacks, and home made bread rolls – we’ve tried to be quite hands-off, only helping when asked.

Things 2 and 3 have enjoyed outdoor art work – they have always enjoyed using the garden stepping stones as canvases for their chalks, and the glorious weather this week has helped.

Thing 1 has been experimenting with acrylics – art is one of her GSCE choices so she’s exploring different media. I asked her to decorate a letter for me, and she chose my favourite garden flowers and my beloved ladybirds.

Daily exercise has been a joy too – social distancing rules have meant we have spent time on North Weald Common behind the house. One day we explored by letting each child choose a direction every time we came to a fork in the path, which led us past rabbits, following badger, fox and deer tracks. The March sunshine has been a blessing here!

I think the format of the days is something we can stick to. They are earning gadget time by doing jobs around the house, so I haven’t emptied the dishwasher in days!

Enough about the horde! What about me?

It’s been a week of adjusting for me too – working remotely with a big project underway has meant a lot of time on video calls – Skype and Microsoft Teams, as well as experimenting with Zoom to talk to my family. After a chaotic Monday briefing where my colleagues were treated to the sight of the kids dropping in and out (Curious George was an amateur compared to this lot) I have been conducting meetings half way up the stairs where the WiFi is consistent and the interruptions are mainly from the cats – equally curious but quieter! Video calls mean I can see people too – you get used to being able to pop down the corridor to ask a question, or chatting over the boiling kettle at coffee time. Whatsapp has been a good tool, too, sharing photos of what the formal learning team have been experimenting with.

I have been thinking about what the schools programme might look like in the new museum – exploring links with STEM and creative subjects rather than social history. I’m getting through a lot of index cards, which have been my go-to organisers since university – and taking advantage of no teaching to do a lot of reading about how children learn and play.

Before and after work I’m trying to make positive use of time – like most crafters, I have a butterfly brain and constantly want to dip into new creative flowers! I’ve made a list of WIPs (works in progress) that have been hanging around for far too long and my lockdown resolution is to work on these rather than starting anything new. I do suffer from depression so it’s helpful to have things to focus on.

The list looks like this:

Purple jacket (a 1950s design that the sleeves wouldn’t work on, so I gave up in a huff and its been hanging from the curtain rail for about four years)
Crochet diploma
Say Something In Welsh course
Coast ripple blanket (Attic24 pattern)
Long waistcoat
Attic window quilt (that I cut out when I only had one child)
Mini quilt (er, ditto)
Seurat cross stitch – at least I only started this last year!
Couch to 5k (again)
Spring clean the shed, evicting the winter spiders…and being realistic about what I will actually use in my stash, then donating the rest

Nothing too ambitious then! I’ve made a start, with the first five modules of the diploma, and the rather wonky mini quilt is finished. The Attic window quilt top just needs the strips put together after a productive day yesterday which also saw Thing 2 starting to learn to sew. I have had to get out another sewing machine – a Singer Samba 2 given to me by my aunt. Sewing machines are like cats and tattoos – one is never enough!

Couch to 5K is going well – early morning frosty runs have been glorious, and I’ve dug out my trail running shoes which are saving my knees!

So that’s week one done… see you on the other side of week two!

In which things begin a little sooner than expected…

When I first decided a blog might be the way to chart the next couple of years, the plan was to get started when the museum I work in closed for an exciting reinvention and I was resident in one of my favourite local primary schools. However, it’s March 2020 and for me – as for so many other people right now – nothing is going quite as planned! Like most non-key workers I am working at home.

Lulu: sulking as I have stolen the computer chair

Who’s in the house?

Today, the crew consists of me, the 13 year old whose school closed earlier this week and three cats in varying stages of outrage at having their daily routines disrupted. We have discovered that the 13 year old doesn’t like seventies rock, which is my work soundtrack of choice, and that she apparently works better when in constant video chat mode with her friends.

From Monday, of course, there will also be the younger two children (11 and 9) as their school closes today. My partner is still working – as a supervisor for a cleaning company he’s still out and about.

Bailey: the reason I have a decoy notebook

So, let’s see what happens over the next few months… expect ramblings, thinking about museum learning and how that translates into a school residency, pictures of cats, things I’m doing to keep myself sane without my wonderful colleagues around me. Whatever I do next!