Wife Mother Runner Blog - Wife Mother Runner

Homeschooling Tips From Somebody Who Has Never Homeschooled

March 27, 2020

Many of you are probably in the same boat as I am. You are now helping your children with homeschooling. I have homeschooling tips from somebody who has never homeschooled. This week was our first week with distance learning. We are all adjusting to this new learning environment and how it fits into our lives.

Have a Schedule

It’s just as important when working from home, and now homeschooling, to have a schedule. This is true for your bedtime schedule also. We are coming across some struggles where Adrienne is doing her homework very late at night. I wasn’t aware of her work requirements.

It’s important to have a schedule for the day so everyone is aware of the expectations. What I’d like to try for our family is:

8:30 a.m. – Wake up. The kids have been setting their own alarms and getting themselves set up for the day
9:30 a.m. – Check In to school. Log in and start schoolwork.
2:00 p.m. – School Day ends. Check in with mom and dad to inform them of any assignments due that night.
3:00 – 8:00 p.m. – Free Time
8:00 p.m. – Homework

Have A Designated Workspace

It’s important for the kids to have a workspace in the house set aside for their learning. Our kids had a space when school started in the fall. Then the room became a landing space for other things in the house. Eventually, the desks were overwhelmed with “stuff” and they were using the kitchen table instead.

During the pause in school while all of the COVID-19 situation was being worked on, the kids and I cleaned up the office and cleared out the area around their desks. They both have their chromebooks and now have a divider between the two of them so they can work in the same room as each other but have some privacy to help cut down on distractions.

Check-In With Your Kids

It’s important to understand what is required of your kids. Distance learning is also teaching them how to be more independent in this new learning environment. But they do still benefit from some adult guidance.

Also, make sure they are drinking their water during class time, getting up to stretch from time to time, and that they have the appropriate ergonomics and eye protection while they are sitting in front of a screen for much longer than they are used to.

My daughter suffers from migraines, so I am checking in with her often to make sure she is not getting a headache from the increase in screen time. When school is over, I am also making sure they are both limiting their screen time on their other devices.

Coping Strategies

Take A Break

If anyone starts to feel overwhelmed, it’s important to take a break. This goes for the students and the parents. From my understanding of our own town’s distance learning requirements, they are not required to be on their computer for 6 straight hours. There are study periods and breaks built into the schedule.

Use School Resources

For us, the school has shared their resources available to both the parents and the students. We can reach out to them and the kids can also reach out to the social services team.

This new learning environment for the kids will take some time to adjust to. I want it to be successful for the kids. I also don’t want them to feel stressed or pressured from it. We are all going to do our best to make it a positive environment for them.

Go Outside

After school is over, put away the electronics and go outside to play. Unplug for an hour or more and get some fresh air. Go for a bike ride, play in the woods, take a walk around the block, play with the dog, or shoot baskets in the driveway.

It’s so important to get a change of scenery. It’s good for their eye health and it is good for their brain and their bodies.

Homeschooling Resources

I have many blogging friends who specialize in homeschooling. Here are a few resources for you to look into for additional help from the experts who know about homeschooling. These resources include activities, online stores for support materials, and general things to do with your kids.

How has your week been? Are your children doing distance learning now? How are they adjusting to the changes? I’d love to hear what is working and what isn’t working for your family! Please share in the comments.

RunDisney Virtual Series For 2020

March 19, 2020

With so much uncertainty now with respect to races and events, you can still participate in races via the runDisney Virtual Series. runDisney has been offering these races each summer for the past five years. I participated in these virtual races when they first came out 5 years ago.

What Does The Virtual Series Include?

If you have ever participated a runDisney race in Walt Disney World, Disneyland, or even the runDisney races in Paris, you know how much fun they are. Characters on the course, fireworks at the starting line, and of course the ability to run through the parks before they are open; and at the end you receive an amazing medal!

If you can’t make it for one of the races in the actual parks, you can still earn your own medal by participating in the runDisney Virtual Series. Or use the virtual 5Ks as a great way to train for runDisney or other events.

Each event takes place over each month of the summer. You can walk or run through any 3.1 mile course of your choosing in your own neighborhood, on a treadmill, or participate in a local race and use that towards your virtual run. Proof of time is NOT required to receive your participation items.

Virtual 5K – June

When you participate in the June Virtual Running Short any time between June 1 – 30, 2020, you will receive the Mad Tea Party themed finisher medal (medal photos not available at this time).

When: June 1 – 30

Cost: approximately $40

Virtual 5K – July

When you participate in the July Virtual Running Short any time between July 1 – 31, 2020, you will receive the Space Mountain finisher medal (medal photos not available at this time).

When: July 1 – 31

Cost: approximately $40

Virtual 5K – August

With the last run of the summer, taking place August 1 – 31, 2020, you can take home the Haunted Mansion finisher medal (medal photos not available at this time).

When: August 1 – 31

Cost: approximately $40

runDisney Virtual Challenge

Should you participate in all three 5K virtual runs, you will receive each individual distance medal PLUS the Virtual Challenge medal. I hope it is shaped like an e-Ticket from the old ticket books we used to have to use for the rides in the Magic Kingdom!

When: June 1, 2020 – August 31, 2020

Cost: approximately $150

What Do Participants Receive?

When you register for one of the races or the challenge, you will receive the following items:

Commemorative Finisher Medal
Downloadable Race Bib
Downloadable Finisher Certificate
A Walt Disney Records playlist on Apple Music and Spotify
Challenge participants will receive a runDisney Virtual Series keepsake

You will receive these items in the mail after you register for the race(s) of your choice. When you do run your race, share photos of it and include #runDisneyVirtual in your posts!

How To Register

Registration for these races begin on March 24, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. EDT on the runDisney site. You can register for just one of the races or all of the races – the Virtual Challenge.

Do you need help training? Are you new to running? Check out my blog post for tips on what to do when you want to begin running.

I can’t wait to see the medals when they are released! Will you participate in one or all of these races this year?

Frost Family Fun Virtual Bingo

March 14, 2020

Our first Virtual Bingo game will take place tonight at 8:00 p.m. EST. The instructions on how to play and all the details you need are listed below.

Want to bust some boredom?

Download the Virtual Bingo card, print it out and distribute one card to each family member playing.

Join Us!

Join my family and I on Facebook! We’ll share the date and time for the game(s) and also create an event invitation so you’ll have a remind when the game is about to start.

Grab some snacks and let’s have some fun while we are forced to be self-quarantined during this historic COVID-19 pandemic.

Gotta find the silver lining right?!

Can’t wait to see you!

Leave a comment if you have any questions.

How I Feel About The Disney Closures

March 13, 2020

Disney will be closed. All of the parks and the cruise line will not be open for business for a period of time. When they will reopen is still an unknown. Wait, what? Let that sink in for a minute. I’m sharing how I personally felt when I started hearing the news about the multiple Disney closures.

The Phases Of The Disney Closures

Asia

When the outbreak of COVID-19 started in Asia, the parks in Hong Kong Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland, and Shanghai Disneyland had to close. In all honesty, I think we all expected that. Because those parks are on the other side of the world, it was out of touch for me. It didn’t really affect me.

Hong Kong Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland closed during the last week of January due to the outbreak of the virus. It is still unknown when they will reopen again.

As of Thursday morning, we all weren’t sure what was going to happen here in the United States. Throughout the day, more and more news updates were coming across my phone about school closings in my state. As the alerts were increasing, we knew there was a chance our schools were going to close for at least two weeks.

What did this mean for us? It meant that the kids would most likely either have online schooling for 4 hours a day; or, they were going to have packets of work to do without a school check-in and they will need to make up the time somehow. Our family has a vacation booked in the near future. We don’t know yet if we will be going on that vacation.

California

Disneyland announced in the late afternoon that they were closing until the end of March. That’s when I thought, “ok, it’s serious”. I knew it was serious all along; but people were still talking about business as usual in every other area except school. I kept thinking, will we still be able to take our trip? Will Walt Disney World close? Is it worse in CA than it is in FL? Do we even want to fly or be in Disney during a time like this.

Florida

Then a few hours later Walt Disney World and the Cruise Lines were halting operations until the end of March. In my opinion, that was big. I also felt it was important. People needed to see the seriousness of the matter. I think we were in the “if you give an inch, they will take a mile” mentality. Places were closing; but people can still go out, travel, drive, shop, go to the movies, and more.

Paris

Disneyland Paris is following the same schedule as Walt Disney World and they will be closing effective, Sunday, March 15 through the end of March.

How can you control a pandemic if people are still going on vacation to places with large congregations of people from areas all over. Sure, closing schools will help reduce the spread of the virus; but if you take the kids out of school and then take them somewhere else, it defeats the purpose.

The Emotional Impact of Disney Closures

When I heard Disneyland was going to close, I held my breath. I assumed that the number of cases being discovered in the West Coast were higher than those on the East Coast so they were starting there first.

When it was announced that Walt Disney World was closing, and that the cruise line was halting operations, I got the sense like Disney would set the precedence for other large businesses in their industry to follow suit.

I Have To Be A Grown Up

We also got official word that our schools were going to be closed but we didn’t know when or how they would make up the time. This meant we have to make some grown up decisions about our vacation around the kids’ school schedule. They are older now and we can’t just take them out for our selfish wants to spend time with them. So we are going to have to find an alternative time to go on our trip.

There was also talk about post-vacation quarantines. So if we were to take the kids out of school for a trip, they may need to be quarantined for an additional 14 days. It’s a no-brainer.

We had a family meeting with the kids over dinner and talked about it all. We told them that with everything going on and so many unknowns, that our vacation will most likely be impacted and we will have to reschedule it. But we will do whatever we can to make the time we are spending together at home a positive experience, and we will have time for vacation as a family as well. We will work it out.

I was very impressed at how the kids handled the news. I expected more emotion or disappointment from them. My daughter was a little emotional about not being able to go to school for two weeks, and my son seemed a little relieved. I think he was needing a break from the heavy workload of homework. He even said on Wednesday that he was looking forward to Spring Break, and I got excited when I heard him say that because I knew we had a surprise for them.

What About….

The runDisney Star Wars Half Marathon Races

It’s still unknown what the status of the race weekend is. You can join my Facebook group for current updates on this race status.

Annual Passes and Tickets

Disney is adding the number of days closed to the expiration date of your existing annual pass.
If you have unexpired multi-day theme park tickets with unused days, or dates during the closures, they will be automatically extended to December 15, 2020.
After Hours and Early Morning Magic tickets are being refunded automatically. See the graphic below for more info.

Vacations Booked

The resorts and Disney Springs are still open.
You can modify or cancel a reservation up to your original check in date for a refund.
All cancellation fees up through June 30, 2020 will be waived.

What Can We Do During The Disney Closures

When Lou Mongello went live from Disney’s Beach Club on Thursday night, I started a watch party. A lot of people joined. We all wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to know what the vibe was like. Were people panicking? Was there still music playing in the parks, and people were strolling along Main Street with their family and having their “normal” vacation? What’s it really like?

Lou went live from The Beach Club in the Breezeway with a few of his friends and his wife. They were walking out of Epcot for the day and he just felt at the moment that he needed to go live. So they sat down and hit the Live button. Lou began sharing why he was going live at that moment and he was feeling emotional. That made me emotional.

There was some shock and awe when the Disney closures were happening. I felt like someone was taking away my favorite toy. Even if I am not there now, I have friends who go there often. I live vicariously through them as I watch and share their live broadcasts. If you know me, you know how much my family and I love Disney. But if it is closed, we can’t go, and our countdown changes, and everything feels out of whack!

It was the human component that was sinking in for me. People were sick and dying. It was because an illness is being spread, and Disney is a place where MANY people congregate. It’s just too risky for everyone. The cast members, the visitors, those traveling to and from there. So I don’t think it was a bad decision to close. It just comes with lots of different emotions. Especially for the groupies like us.

If our favorite place, the place we call home, the place that brings us joy and pleasure has to close, then things must be pretty bad. They aren’t just closing for the day either. They will be closed until the end of March, and anything after that is yet to be determined. Whoa.

As Lou was chatting with us online and with the folks sitting with him in the room, we all felt the need to be together online. We all have this common bond with our love of Disney, but we are also people who care about other people. As US citizens, we needed to be responsible in helping prevent this disruptive virus from crippling the world even worse than it already was.

What Can We Do Now?

Share the good news. Find the silver lining. I already saw some good news coming out of Disney. Disneyland Resort is donating excess food during the temporary closure.

Host your own online events!

I will be going live with my family every day to share what we are doing during our time at home. I also have some creative ideas to bring us all together virtually. I’ll be sharing more on that soon! If you have a shared interest with others, get online, talk about it! Sometimes just saying things out loud to other people helps make you feel better.

How do you feel about Disney closing? Share your comments below!

How To Handle Coronavirus As A Family

March 12, 2020

As this week’s news ramped up about the Coronavirus, so did tensions around the world. Schools are closing and extending spring break, some to clean, and some to manage the outbreak. I have some suggestions for how to handle coronavirus as a family.

Be Open To Learn

I got a lot of backlash on social media on Wednesday because of a comment I made on my Facebook page that “if my kids schools are closed, I’d love to rent an RV and take them across the country”. The comment I made was just a hypothetical situation. I was just talking out loud about how I would want to make a positive situation out of a negative situation. How I would want to give my kids an education via an outdoor environment.

I was called ignorant and considered irresponsible for making such a statement. At first my feelings were a little hurt. But then I realized that people are reacting out of emotion. One of the people who made a statement lives in Italy. She has been quarantined for several weeks. Her children are school age; but they didn’t have a plan in place for their schooling needs. I think they are just now doing some online classes.

During stressful times, people deal with stress in several ways, some make jokes, some lash out, some stay quiet. I’d like to just ask people to be kind to one another during this hard time. Everyone handles stress differently; but I still believe in the golden rule, “treat others how you would like to be treated yourself.”

On Wednesday night the President of the United States addressed the country and what will be done to protect the US citizens. I felt that it was important for my children to watch the address so we could talk about it as a family. I wanted to know what was being said at school and then compare that to what we learned from the Presidential address.

Basic Hygiene

As I write this, our schools are still currently open. Two big points we are telling our children who are 11 and 12 is

Wash their hands frequently with soap and hot water
DO NOT TOUCH their face
Sleep. Believe it or not it’s still important to get your sleep so you can remain healthy.
Eat healthy. Yes, it’s important to eat your green things every day. I don’t know what the future holds in terms of having access to groceries and fresh produce; but if you can, please be sure to get some. Make some soups ahead of time and freeze them.

Other basic common sense tips are to cover their mouth and nose with their sleeve if they cough or sneeze and then wash their hands again. It’s the beginning of allergy season where we live so there may be coughing and sneezing related to that as well. So it’s important to use soap and water in addition to any hand sanitizers.

We are also recommending they clean and disinfect their phones often. They don’t bring their phones outside the home; when they come home they are touching them along with their other electronics. So we are being diligent about cleaning our phones.

Handling Anxiety

As I said, tensions are high right now. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to make sure we talked about this as a family at dinner last night. Then we watched the speech from the President.

If your family is feeling anxiety from the latest news or what they are hearing from schools, get the information for them to help answer their questions. You can visit the CDC and World Health Organization web sites for the most current and up-to-date information.

When something big happens, we are overloaded with information, some good, some bad. Yesterday was one of those days. I was at a client site and there were cancellations of trade shows and events left and right. It’s very disruptive to an every day schedule. Therefore, causing additional stress on top of a normal workload.

Some ways you can manage your own anxiety could be by following my suggestions below:

Get outside and take a walk. Get some fresh air and help reset yourself. Remove yourself from your desk and the emails for a little bit.
If you normally work out, continue to do so. You may not feel the motivation to work out. Sometimes the hardest part is changing into your workout clothes. Once you do, you are one step closer to reaching your goal. The workout will release endorphins and help lift your mood.
If you feel like you have nervous energy, use that to your benefit. Do you have a pile of papers on your desk you have been ignoring to clean up? Tackle that pile now. You’ll feel productive and see your progress from doing something with your hands.

Boredom Busters

If your school or work is closing and you are asked to stay home, I have some ideas to help you manage the boredom. Where we live, the weather is getting nicer out, so despite being at home, I’d like to use this opportunity to do some things outside as a family.

Start a garden. We like to start our vegetable and flower garden by seed. Each spring we use soil pods and our indoor greenhouse and grow our plants from seed.
Get outdoors. Just because you are at home doesn’t mean you can’t do things outdoors. We have the farm up the street from us. If the kids don’t have school, I plan on spending more time up at the farm. We will talk to our farmer friend Jeff and see what we can do for some hands-on help for him. It’s chick season now, so we can help Jeff take care of his new batch of chicks. I also want to incorporate some outdoor learning with the kids.

Cook together. Why not take this time to do some homeschooling at a different level. Teach your kids how to bake or cook. I bet everyone has a few boxes of cake mix in the house. Take some of the everyday activities you do and use the time to teach your kids how to manage a home. Do this with age appropriate tasks of course.
Binge Watch. Yes, I said it. Sometimes it’s ok to allow yourself to watch some mindless television. Streaming shows can sometimes help take your mind off the current situation and allow your brain to rest from the outside stresses. Do it as a family or allow everyone to have some downtime to hang in their own space for a bit.

Find The Positive In A Negative Environment

This is rough on everyone. When I drove my son to school today I used the time to share with him how many times, inventions and good things can come out of a bad situation. I encouraged Kevin to think about how something good can come out of something bad. I’m sure new products will come out in the future because of this outbreak of a virus.

What I plan to take from this is:

Embrace the family time. There may be some unplanned family time coming up. I still have my business to maintain; and the children will have to manage their schoolwork in a different working environment. This is something different for them. But I am going to remind myself to be patient.
Tackle projects together. Most families have projects that have been put off for a rainy day. Take this time to tackle those projects, and get the kids involved if possible.
Find a way that you can help others in your community virtually. If you can’t go out and help with your hands in public, find other ways to assist those in need. If there are elderly people who live alone at home; get their phone numbers to check on them. Ask your community center how you may be a help to them while you and they may be home-bound.

Are You Feeling Anxious About The Coronavirus?

Do you have any advice to share on how you and your family are handling all of these current changes? I’d love to hear what you are doing to help work through these stressful times. Leave a comment below.

5 Tips For Raising Chickens

March 9, 2020

Chick Days are coming up at stores like Agway and Tractor Supply. This is the time of year when live chicks arrive in many stores.

In the Spring of 2018 we decided to add a little fun to our life and we purchased baby chickens from Tractor Supply. Since we had knowledge of how to care for chickens from our time at the farm, we knew it wasn’t going to be a big undertaking for us. I’m here to share five tips for raising chickens. This post contains affiliate links.

Best Tips for Raising Chickens

1. What To Do When You Bring The Chicks Home

These fuzzy little creature are so adorable and all you want to do is cuddle with them. That is ok but you do have to be very careful that you don’t drop them. They do not have wings yet and they are still clumsy on their feet.

When you bring them home you need to provide a large enough area with pine shavings for them to walk around, and they need to be kept warm with a heat lamp.
You shouldn’t bring them into your house. You can set up an area in a mud room or your garage. They will grow quickly.
They will need special food which contains an antibiotic, and 20% protein. Feed them that food until they begin to lay eggs. Then you switch their feed to a layer’s feed.
They also need water. Often times they will get their pine shavings in their water so you have to make sure to clean that out often.

2. What Happens When They Start To Outgrow Their Habitat

As the chickens start to grow you will need to expand their space to allow them to have more room. They still need to be cared for indoors and with heat for at least month to six weeks depending on where you live and the temperatures. They also need to grow their feathers to stay warm on their own.

3. Moving The Chickens To A Coop

When the chickens are old enough and strong enough to move into a coop you can place them in any type of coop. You can purchase one, build one, or do what we did and retrofit part of our shed to house our birds.

My husband built a coop for our birds in a section of our shed in the backyard. This works out perfectly so they can leave the coop and roam in the run that he set up for them.

What Do The Chickens Need In Their Coop

Shelter from the rain and predators
An area to roost
A nesting box to lay eggs
An area to walk around
A feeder
Food
Water

If you have pine shavings or wood chips in your coop, you will need to clean it out about once a month. You’d be surprised at how much poop chickens make!

It’s also very important to protect the birds from predators. In our town we have had an abundance of hawks.

One afternoon we heard the chickens squawking, so we rushed down there to find that a hawk had gotten into their area and one of our birds was injured. She was coughing blood and was breathing heavy. We brought her into the shed and kept her apart from the other birds while we cared for her. Thankfully she recovered just fine.

Soon after that my husband built an outdoor protected area for them to forage for worms and bugs. He has reinforced that area with deer netting so we think they should be 100% safe now.

4. What To Do When Chickens Begin Laying Eggs

When your birds begin laying eggs you need to switch their feed to a layers feed which contains 16% protein.

The prefer to lay their eggs in a nesting box. Typically they don’t lay their eggs where they eat and poop. So that’s why it is important to have a nesting box.

If they get confused and start laying eggs in an area separate from the nesting box, then you can give them some encouragement by adding a few golf balls into the box to give them a visual clue that the eggs need to be there. This method truly does work!

Did you know that you don’t have to put fresh chicken eggs in the refrigerator?

- When chickens lay an egg there is a special coating on the egg called a bloom. This is a natural seal for the eggs.
- When you purchase eggs from a store the eggs have been washed and the bloom has been stripped off of the eggs. Therefore they must be refrigerated.
- You can keep the eggs on your chicken counter for up to five weeks!
- If you choose to wash farm fresh eggs, then you will have to refrigerate them.

5. Other Tips To Know About Raising Chickens

Raising chickens is a lot of fun. They are very easy to care for and having your own fresh eggs is priceless. We purchased 15 chicks when we bought ours but three of them were roosters.

In our town you are only allowed to have one rooster if you are not classified as a farm. Since we are friends with Jeff Andrews, the farmer up the street, we were able to give our roosters to him.

You will know your bird is a rooster by their size, they will grow a spur on the back of their legs, and they will start to crow.

Depending on the type of chicks you purchase will determine the color eggs they produce. We have Black Sexlinks that lay brown eggs.

If you want turquoise eggs, you need to purchase the following type of birds:

Ameraucana
Araucanas
Cream Legbar
Easter Eggers

If you prefer white eggs, you can get them from:

White leghorn chickens
Lt. Brown leghorn Chickens

Having chickens is a great experience for you and your children. I love having them. I look forward to collecting their eggs each day, I like to let them free range in our yard when we are around, and the kids love having something to care for.

It’s a great learning experience for the children to also understand the circle of life. We lost one of our chickens due to natural causes; but she was very special to us because we cared for her when she was only a few weeks old. She was the runt from a flock Jeff got, so he gave her to us to care for. She immediately became our special pet and we grew very attached to her. You can check out the video footage we kept of her on the Chickie Channel.

It was a heartbreaking day when she died. But it also helped the children understand how to deal with grief from the loss of a family pet, and it helped me as a parent learn how to handle such a situation with my children. Hopefully these tips for raising chickens will be helpful to you should you decide to get some of your own.

Did I inspire you to raise chickens? Please comment below if you have any questions or if you are going to raise your own birds! I’d love to hear your stories!