School at home: Kindergarten is a fascinating state of mind

Now that brick-and-mortar schools are slated to open for business tomorrow, I find myself reflecting on our at-home school journey. 

Kindergarten is a fascinating state of mind. I’m amazed at how much my grandson and I have learned in the past month after school buildings emptied out to thwart the dastardly virus. 

And we weren’t the only grandparents, either live-in or podding for the purpose, who were called on for “HELP!”

It all came down to this: no engaged adult sitting right beside the youngest students = no learning, despite teachers’ best efforts. But with many parents working during school time, a lot of arranging had to be done. That’s where grandparents, and sometimes friends and neighbours, were called to assist.

With my grandson, I learned to write the letter M, among others. I realized when you are first starting out at four years old, it isn’t as easy as it looks. You have to stay between those two lines. M goes up and then down and then up again and down again. That’s just the letter M. There are 25 more. Your little student is beginning an adventure that starts with a few letters and—presto-change-o—you get a whole word. Add to that a whole bunch more words and this little kid may use them in future to change the world.  

In one way, it is hard to learn at home when you are four. You are squirmy. Your attention span is shorter than you are. Is little sister playing with the Ninja Turtle Sewer Set? It is so tempting to go pick up Raphael, but as soon as you slip away from your seat, Oma calls, “Come right back here.  It’s still school time!"

This whole at-home school experience gave me some insight into a teacher’s in-school day, where  25 or 30 kids in the class are all trying hard to concentrate on their assignments and not leap up from their chairs and run around madly, hooting and hollering. You see the wide range of ability in each class, and imagine how hard it would be to do justice to each child to make sure they learn the best they can.

In our on-line class in the living room, we learned about emotions—It’s OK to be sad sometimes. What can you do to feel better? Can you ask your friends to help you? or What makes you happy?  or It’s nice to help your family and friends. The message is clear: when you help each other it makes for a better world. We can only hope these Kindergarten lessons carry on to the adult world more and more.

Before that we had gym class and got to practice our yoga, walking, running, jumping and the Chicken Dance. Chicken Dance? Wedding? We are good to go for any such celebration post-COVID. Our grandchildren will be the stars. And I’m proud to say Oma got pretty good, too, even when the music was really, really fast.

We carried out science experiments—will snow melt faster in a tub on the kitchen counter or in the freezer? Write down how long each took.

Let’s learn our numbers. With pencil and paper, we went around the house counting up the number of lamps, beds, couches, you name it. And then charted them with tally marks. That concept takes awhile when you are four. This exercise really emphasized the idea of not just looking, but actually seeing. Reminds me of the time Sherlock Holmes asked Watson how many stairs led up to their apartment, after they had clumped up and down them for years. Watson was stumped.

Learning at home put teachers under a lot more scrutiny from all those  parents and grandparents sitting beside their kids. Everyone was on a learning curve, but everyone soon got it. Kids got into the groove and were masters at teaching Oma how to log in to the classroom, how to mute the mike, how to raise your hand virtually. Most of all, it showed that, like much of life, you need a team to make the whole thing go.  What a thrill to see my little grandson master those letters, numbers and ideas and slowly get the idea that you have to practice, practice, practice. It made it all worthwhile.

We celebrated alone--but there's hope for 2021

 

                                               

              Our whole world shrank this year during the Great Pandemic Christmas.

                 But seeing how people coped during this time gave me hope for the New Year.

And it reminded me of the first time I was alone at Christmas, several years ago.

The door slammed shut, it was quiet. Quiet. That was a sound I hadn’t heard for a long time.

It was the first time I wasn’t part of our large family gathering of cheerful people, lots of food and Christmas joy.

But what a Christmas Eve that was! Nobody was clinging to my legs, saying, “Mommy……mommy!”

No one was drawing on the walls or upending giant containers of Lego blocks all over the 

freshly washed floor. The cushions were on the couch; they were not part of a kid fort.  Nobody was crying, or wailing (us or the kids) and no bottles were heating up on the stove.

Snow was gently falling. The manger scene beside the fireplace looked peaceful.

I made a cup of coffee and listened to Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”.

But after a few hours, I began to think, “When are they coming back?” 

I looked at the front door, waiting for my husband and our three little ones who added so much joy to my life to come back.

It was close to midnight. At last the door flew open and everyone tumbled in, snowsuits flying everywhere. They couldn’t wait to tell me what Santa had brought them at the family party (yes, he was there in person).

It’s funny that a bad case of the flu had forced me to stay home that year. 

And now the whole world has the flu and now the whole world has to stay home.

For another month, we’ll be following the edict that came down just before Christmas. Stay home. Stay out of other people’s houses. For Heaven’s sake, try to avoid shopping in person. Here we go again.

This year’s peculiar Christmas made me realize even more that we who have a safe place to live and are pretty healthy are really the lucky ones. 

Even with all the bad stuff coming from the Pandemic, it was amazing to see how people coped.

I look to my 92-year-old aunt for inspiration. In the old “normal” days she went out every day to visit her friends at her favourite coffee shop. That got taken away on March 13 when our first lockdown happened. She lives alone. And somehow she has managed to adjust and even thrive. Relatives and friends kept in regular phone contact throughout the year and she still went out to shop once a week. She keeps her place spotless, is interested in everything going on around her and has managed to keep her spirits up. On Christmas Eve, she lit the candles on her Advent wreath, and celebrated with a nice piece of Stollen (German Christmas cake) and freshly-brewed coffee. She got out her list of people to call and was on the phone for a couple of hours to share Christmas greetings with them.

In other parts of our larger world, people shared what they had. Researchers have been toiling to bring us vaccines against the virus. Local merchants and businesses bent over backwards to keep their staff and customers safe.

Christmas decorations and lights began popping up all over the place earlier than any year before, as if to say, “We will not be defeated by you, virus!”

I read that someone in Alberta left $250 gift cards to many people, along with a letter asking them to pay it forward if they didn’t need the money. Local food banks and charitable organizations have served more people than ever. In Stouffville, it has been a tradition for volunteers to prepare a Christmas dinner for anyone who needed it. It began as a large sit-down affair complete with Santa, but later changed to volunteers delivering the festive meals on Christmas Day. And despite the pandemic, the group was still able to provide Christmas dinners for people in need. 

In our smaller world, we heard about children making outdoor visits to their grandparents and opening their gifts at their own house by the shining light of their computers. This way, their grandparents could be part of the fun, too. We also took to the outdoors. Since we couldn’t invite anyone over, we exchanged festive food with another family while the kids played on the lawn and made snow angels. After dinner at our respective homes, we huddled by the computer to open our gifts with the other family, ZOOMing all the way. People made Christmas videos to tie their families together, and to say, “We are still here for you”. 

Maybe these are some of the things that give me the courage to say Happy New Year 2021 to all of you and hope that it will really be a better year.

Scammers calling? Want your information? Say NO! and hang up

 

I wanted to write this because of suspicious e-mails I received from a friend and also because I got two phone scammers to hang up on me!

The festive season is a good time to be reminded about scams so we don't get caught. There seem to be an extra lot of them this time of year.

The first e-mail asked, “Can you do me a favour?”  When I replied ‘yes’, the second one followed--pronto. I was suspicious after the first two lines. First of all, the language used didn’t sound like her. The e-mail said to rush right out and get gift cards so she could give them to her niece for a birthday. Couldn't go herself due to her suddenly bad knees. So I phoned her right away. Luckily, she had already been alerted and was working to get rid of the e-mails. I suggested that she let her groups of friends know about this scam. Unfortunately, someone had already fallen for it  and lost money.

Lately, more and more phone scammers are telling me about my compromised credit cards or threatening me with jail time.

But how, I ask myself, can I have had a chance to commit a crime? For the past seven months, our main outings have been venturing to a grocery store, taking out a coffee or visiting friends as we sat just outside of hearing range.

Everyone that I talk to has these pesky phone calls.

So it gave me great satisfaction when I got two scammers to hang up on me! 

The first one was a man with a lovely voice. He was raising money: he invoked the name of the police, fire fighters and first responders. Honestly, how could I resist? When I heard that voice, I was convinced he was the kind of person who could carry me out of a burning building safely—from the top floor. I thought we were getting along fine. He asked how I preferred to donate. “I no longer donate over the phone,” I said. “Could you give me your website so I can donate there? I’ve got my pen and paper rea….”

CLICK!

Our relationship was over so suddenly.

Then there are the fake credit card company calls.  I got several ; sometimes two in the same day. Each time, the amount supposedly taken out of my account was different. My curiosity was piqued. When they said, Press 9 if you want to talk to a fraud officer, I did. Unfortunately, I yelled at them. This is a scam, I said. Stop calling me. Now if they had my financial interest at heart, don’t you think they would at least have allowed me to finish ranting and then tried to help me? Not a chance.

All I heard was the gentle CLICK! of a scammer crawling back into its hole.

That made me think of all the vulnerable or distracted people who will be caught by them. So when I phone my 92-year-old aunt, I’ll ask her every so often if she has had any suspicious calls. Oh yes, she says, but I know what to do. “I hang up!” 

Get the word out about these scams that take so much money from too many people and keep talking about them to your friends and family. Make sure to check up on people who could become their victims.

The variety of scams listed on the York Region Police website (yrp.ca) alone is enough to make your hair curl. The site is a good place to check for more information on how you can protect yourself.

          

Boo to scary 2020

 

2020 is on its way out and good riddance.

It’s been the scariest year for many of us. Natural disasters, unnatural job and business losses and too many heartbreaking deaths in long-term care settings, all fuelled by COVID-19, have made everyone unsettled.

And Halloween, that pseudo-scary time with a promise of some respite from all the doom and gloom, is just around the corner. Almost every kid has been dreaming about Halloween for weeks, even months, imagining their costumes and how many treats they’ll get and who they’ll go Trick or Treating with. Many people are still putting up imaginative Halloween displays. But will the virus stop this fun time for kids?

Festivities and celebrations are something we take for granted—until this year. In the old days, they gave people a chance to celebrate their harvests, bring brightness to a long-cooped-up winter or herald the beginning of a joyous spring. And of course, a chance to exorcise all those scary spirits on October 31st.

But it looks like things may be grinding to a halt. Those wretched COVID-19 numbers are going up again, so public health officials are advising: no Halloween parties, no Trick or Treating in COVID ‘hotspots’.

Where does that leave the kids? As confused, probably, as are many adults. Everyone is trying to gauge the situation.

What happens in municipalities where there is not yet a stop sign to Trick or Treating? With the pandemic the bizarre social experiment that it is, it is causing some dilemmas. Should everyone talk to their neighbours to see what they are doing? Or will they risk going down in the annals of the Great Pandemic of 2020 as the ONLY person on their street who had the audacity to hand out treats? Will they be featured on our local news outlets? Or will people ‘region-hop’ for an old-fashioned Trick or Treating? With directives changing so rapidly, we have to sift all the information we get from health and government authorities and use some common sense to see what everyone does on October 31st. 

This year our Halloween will be different, but we still want life to go on. 

There are all kinds of ideas for a safer Halloween: people are installing big pipes to slide the candy down to waiting ghosts and goblins; they are thinking about using hockey sticks or tongs to make the candy transfer safer. One young mom plans to hide Halloween candies throughout the house, put on some eery Halloween music and turn off the lights with much drama and fanfare. Then her kids will wield flashlights to find their treats—indoors. 

Or maybe youngsters can share their Halloween evening with one friend.

For the first time ever, our family will be doing our Halloween ‘in-house’. We’ll put on our costumes and hand out treats for our grandchildren from our front and back doors. A mini spooky adventure in the backyard will lead the kids to a few treat stations, ‘peopled’ by many garden gnomes (courtesy of their Great-Opa) along with a few rubber spiders, a couple of styrofoam gravestones and a skull or two. 

If you want a bigger activity, local churches and municipalities are worth checking out, too, for various safety-minded Halloween events and drive-throughs.

But the person who displayed the giant numbers ‘2020’ in his front yard as the scariest thing he could think of had it right.

That’s the spirit to emulate. We have to laugh in spite of the tears of 2020 as we try to have a happy and safe Halloween.

 

Magic Staircase to history at Schell Lumber in Stouffville

                                    
Glen Byer operates the foot pedal on the mortise and tenon machine dating back                                                    to 1922 in the Schell Lumber Sash and Door Shop.

From Stouffville Free Press, August 18, 2016

By Hannelore Volpe

There’s a magical-looking staircase that leads directly to the past at the Schell Lumber Home Building Centre in downtown Stouffville.

Climb up the well-worn stairs and you enter into a heritage woodworking shop dating back to 1878.

Called the Schell Lumber Sash and Door Shop, it is presided over by Harry Schell, the 89 year old Schell family patriarch who still comes in to work every weekday. The head craftsman is Glen Byer, who learned woodworking and related trades from his dad. Mr. Byer has been working with the Schell family for around 20 years. His first assignment was to make 40 windows destined for the British Virgin Islands.

Working with him is Mr. Schell’s grandson, Jeremy, who can be found on any given day involved in such projects as producing dozens of dogleg balusters destined for local homes.

The workshop is a fascinating place. With its high ceiling, now insulated, and exposed brick walls, it wouldn’t be out of place in a fashionable downtown Toronto coffee shop-except for the machines and sawdust, although these too would be a drawing card.

In fact, two machines, the band saw with its 18 foot long blade and ‘Harry’s Sticker’, used for cutting out intricate trim shapes, date back to 1878. The mortise and tenon machine from around 1922 produces custom window frames. All three machines, as well as many others, are in regular use.

 The solid maple floor was installed by Harry Schell himself. A giant boiler that was located downstairs at one time produced steam to run the belts that drove the main shaft in the workshop upstairs. It was in use until the 1970s, when the business converted to electricity.

“This was one of the first commercial buildings in Stouffville,” noted Schell operations manager Ron Schell, who is the grandson of the original owner, Wesley Schell. The building was first used as a planing mill in 1878. Wesley Schell bought the building with a partner, Clayton Stouffer, in 1922. It was then home to the Canadian Bee Supply and Honey Co. “They had a planer and a saw to keep the customers. Farmers wanted wood to fix their wagon or their manure spreader,” Harry explained.

After a few years, Wesley Schell became the sole owner. “After World War Two, my brother Percy and I started to work with Dad and carried it on and we are still here,” said Harry. Back then, he managed the mill workshop, and Percy managed the office.

The shop still produces windows and doors and is also sought after by people looking to restore the trim, mouldings, windows and doors of their traditional homes here and in surrounding communities. In the early years, the business produced 14 inch high baseboards and door trim, Ron noted. Now, the Sash and Door Shop fixes doors, does replications of historic designs, builds mantelpieces and “whatever is related to wood,” he added.

When you head back downstairs, you are right back in the 21st century in a bustling place with trades people and residents coming in and out. You can sense the camaraderie between the staff and customers. This is a place to come, not just for building or lumber related supplies, but because the knowledgeable staff will answer your questions and point you in the right direction with your project. These days Harry and Percy Schell’s children and grandchildren work in the shop, the Schell hardware and design store and the lumber yard.

But the wood working shop still retains its link with the past. It is unique, said Mr. Byer, because it “still uses the old machines” and the work is done “the old-fashioned way”.

Lemonville Group of Artists goes On-line!

                                          Enjoy lively art at www.lemonvillegroupofartists.com

For our family, the first joyful event that shouts ‘spring has come’ is the annual art show by the Lemonville Group of Artists.

It’s right up there with seeing the crocuses bloom and watching robins feed their fuzzy nestlings. 

For 26 years now, people have streamed into the Lemonville Community Centre the first weekend in May to enjoy the group’s colourful, incredibly varied art and talk with the artists. During the show, the place is wall-to-wall colour. You can see the creativity percolating from each work. The buzz of conversation fills the air and sunlight streams through the large windows.

This would have been the Lemonville Group of Artists’ 27th year. But as we know all too well, COVID-19 has led to almost everything being cancelled. 

So the group decided to put the show on-line at lemonvillegroupofartists.com

 And the works will be there for the whole summer. It’s a great way to lift your spirits.

The site is easy to navigate. You can look up each artist’s creations and can contact the artist if you want to know more about their work or purchase one. 

This isn’t the first time the group has had to meet a major challenge; two years ago the power was out at the Lemonville Community Centre for the whole show weekend and it turned into a ‘bring your own flashlight’ event for the artists. And it was a success.

The Lemonville Group of Artists ordinarily meets weekly with guest instructors or group members leading workshops. The 20-member group enjoys exploring, learning and trying new media and ideas, in effect’ stretching’ themselves, and it shows in their art. Each artist is distinct in what they produce.

Visit the show at lemonvillegroupofartists.com

Bang those pots and pans!! Support front-line workers

Video credit: Justin Pray

I think this self-isolation business is starting to get on my nerves.
It’s week eight already, we’ve cooked every single meal from scratch (oh, the memory of our wonderful coffee shops and restaurants) and cleaned, filed and sorted ad infinitum. And, of course, have read, written and gardened; that’s the silver lining.
We have gotten used to ordering groceries and buying what we need on-line.
We have become modern-age pioneers as we try to beat the dastardly COVID-19 bug.
But today, I saw the sun for awhile and the temperature was slowly inching towards sweater-less weather. If this were last summer, we would give in to the temptation to gather with our fellow human beings and head outside to concerts, art festivals and any other community event going. Crowds of people would be everywhere.
But wait a minute: the COVID-19 pandemic still holds the upper hand. COVID-19 cases and deaths world-wide continue to go up daily—although more slowly in some places. There are already plans in place to gradually reopen the economy. We don’t know exactly when, but it will happen.
I think we will soon turn the corner on the pandemic because of the partnership we Canadians have developed. Our half of the partnership entails staying home. And it looks like Stouffville is doing its part. There are cars parked in driveways all over town. The bottom line is that if fewer of us are exposed to the virus, the other half of our partnership—doctors, nurses and other front-line workers—will have fewer of us to look after.
The paramedic, funeral director assistant, personal support worker, essential municipal employee, grocery store clerk, former hospital employee, family doctor and TTC bus driver in our family and friend circles know first-hand what’s involved.
We grieve with the family doctor, who has seen patients taken by COVID-19 recently. Many of these people have become her friends over the years.
We wonder how difficult it will be for one young paramedic who is returning to work. Her little boy is one year old, just learning how to walk, and mommy can be exposed to the virus every day.
Even an hour of wearing all that cumbersome PPE can be exhausting, but doctors, nurses and others press on to care for their patients.
One young man whose job takes him to hospitals and nursing homes frequently is asked each time if he has been in contact with anyone with COVID-19. One memorable day when he again said, “Yes, every day!”, he was surprised as those near him left with great speed.
 Although most shoppers respect the rules in grocery stores by keeping their six-foot distance, there are still a few who come up close to the grocery store employee, tap him on the shoulder and ask that vital question, “where are the frozen peas?”
But most of us are overwhelmed by the sacrifices, sheer determination and courage of our front-line people.
Businesses and individuals will drop off food for hospital staff. One man plays Beatles music from his car to cheer everyone up while police, paramedics and firefighters have formed parades around hospitals, displaying morale-bolstering signs.
In front of Stouffville’s Northern Gate community, residents have put up a big Thank You sign with Canadian flags. The residents have stood at the ends of their driveways, banging pots and pans, singing O Canada, and listening to a neighbour play the trumpet. In Unionville, many homes have blue hearts, some with “Thank you” painted on them in their front yards. In the tiny community of Burnt River, the hearts are bright red. Every week the number of hearts keeps growing, while Snoopy hugs Woodstock on signs around Musselman’s Lake and in town.
In downtown Toronto, people are banging pots and pans from the upper floors of their condo buildings and at 7:30 each night, you’ll hear the clanging on a street near the Danforth.
But this is not the time to be fooled, even though COVID-19 numbers are growing more slowly. We have to keep on keeping on, following the same old saw, Stay home, wash your hands, cough into your elbow and stay six feet away from anybody outside of your house.
We don’t want to undo all our hard work!