Host a Virtual Lunch for Your Kids and Their Friends
If you ask a child, any child, what is their favorite part of the school day, you will probably get one of two answers: break or lunch. Which means, while a lot of kids probably don’t yearn for a good old-fashioned math or social studies lesson right now, they do miss running around together outside the diner chat.
There’s not much we can do about notching out that piece (although I wondered if it was possible for my son to have a nerf shootout with friends who live two yards away). But we can recreate the school lunch scenario by running what a parent calls a regular “lunch” on Zoom — or another video conferencing platform .
Listeners called the recent episode of NPR’s The Takeaway podcast to talk about how they survive indoors, and a parent in Massachusetts suggested this idea:
I am now at home with two daughters who are in elementary and middle school, and one of the things we do that works well is organizing Zoom conferences for their friends. Now there is a bun lunch every day at 12:30 pm and it helps them stay connected and feel a little less intimidated under these circumstances.
If you have children and have access to computers or tablets, they are probably already video chatting with family and friends during this time of physical distancing . But having a regular social lunch together can add another level of routine and normality to these abnormal times.