Sarah and Ben Meyer are a young couple who like many thousands of others have suddenly found their lives turned upside down.
For mum Sarah, who recently left a job in marketing to spend more time at home with Issy, 5 and 16 month old Charlotte, plus to study for a degree in psychology things are as you can imagine pretty full on. For Ben, an IT Manager with a firm of financial advisors the change to full time working from home is no less a challenge.
Having seen the pictures Sarah and Ben have been sending in to our Family @ 4 feature we invited Sarah to tell us about her day – this is what she said.
Hi, since I gave up my full time job I have only been working one day a week, leading baby and toddler music and sensory classes and as I’m no longer doing that I’m free to look after the kids then do my uni study on an evening and sometimes in Ben’s lunch break. This is when he takes on the play leader role.
In theory I suppose we do have a loose timetable, some sort of routine but to be honest we take it day by day. So usually it’s PE in the morning; Joe Wicks, Kids Yoga or another You Tube class then story and snack time. Following that I’ll prepare a selection of tasks that school has set and Issy chooses what she wants to do until it’s time for lunch. If we aren’t already in the garden that’s also time to play outside.
Usually afternoons are just free to do anything we like. Quite often we’ll do a bit of reading or do some more work on our rainbows badge. If the weather’s good we’re either in and out of the garden or off on a walk; if not then we’ll stay in and watch a bit of Cbeebies.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays we go on-line and join in with Shelley, Rowan and Daisy as they present Oasis and Moortots – the girls love this and it’s great for us all to know that people who we might normally all be sitting and playing with will also be watching.
Some days, like today we’ve not yet done anything that school has set because Issy doesn’t really want to. But that doesn’t mean we’re not still learning. I love free play, to me it’s the best. So that means that for today, and for any others like it we believe that in addition to learning to dance to the Greatest Showman, making shapes and counting in the sand pit, “baking” playdough biscuits, seeing how big our caterpillars have grown and playing hopscotch are all perfect ways to learn.
As for Charlotte, she just sort of falls in with what we are all doing albeit in her own way; right now she too is dancing to the Greatest Showman. But she’s really good at amusing herself. Yes she has the odd tantrum and occasional she naps but I guess in a way at 16 months old she’s the least affected of us all.
One thing we did do last week we really enjoyed we called Rainbows and Hope. It involved making our rainbows to join in with the rainbow trails that are springing up across the world. This soon started a discussion about why we were doing a rainbow, so as part of Issy’s “RE lesson” we all looked at the story of Noah and the Ark. And this is what we decided.
At the moment it feels as though we are in the ark, not being able to go out very much and not being able to see our friends. But Noah trusted God and he knew that by staying in the ark he was keeping his family and all the creatures safe. At the end of the flood God put a rainbow in the sky as His promise that He would never destroy the earth again. Every time God saw the rainbow He would remember his promise.
The rainbow was sign of peace from God and of hope that all will be fine at the end of the storm. When we go out on our daily exercise we look for rainbows in the house windows and are reminded of God’s promise to us.
There are a couple of links here to some videos we have made: one shows the girls joining in last Sunday’s Church at Home Service, and the other is them negotiating our home-made obstacle course.
https://www.facebook.com/sarahjmeyer/videos/10156852810107204/
https://www.facebook.com/sarahjmeyer/videos/10156852808507204/