If you ask a kid, any kid, what their favourite part of the school day is, you’re likely to get one of two answers: Recess or lunch. Which means, while many kids probably aren’t pining for a good old fashioned maths or social studies lesson right now, they do miss running around together outside and chatting in the lunchroom.
There’s not a whole lot we can do about the recess part of that (although I have wondered whether it’s possible for my son to have a Nerf gun battle with friends who live two yards away). But we can recreate a school lunch scenario by starting what one parent calls a regular “Lunch Bunch” on Zoom—or another video conferencing platform.
Listeners called in to a recent episode of NPR’s The Takeaway podcast to talk about how they’re surviving the days indoors, and one parent in Massachusetts offered up this idea:
I am home with two daughters in elementary and middle school right now, and one of the things we’re doing that seems to work well is setting up Zoom conferences for their friends. There’s now a “lunch bunch” every day at 12:30 and it’s helping them stay connected and feel a little less scared in these circumstances.
If you’ve got kids and access to computers or tablets, they’re 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 normalcy to these abnormal times.
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