An end to home schooling looks like it’s on the horizon in Australia, with many states now planning phased returns to classroom education. But the months of isolation and social distancing have seen parents and children drawing on deep reserves of creativity like never before.
For Sydney’s Simon Greiner, aka @TheCardboardDad on Instagram, isolation meant an escalation to his already impressive efforts to create a magical play world for his kids out of cardboard.
Greiner started building his astonishing contraptions at the request of his four-year-old son. As each brief got filled, the next became more elaborate and specific – such as a “giant hand”, “a helicopter I can go in with a spinning propeller”, “a real castle I can go in with a drawbridge” or “a wrecking ball that lets me smash something down”. Soon they were coming in at an “alarming frequency”, Greiner says.
“It’s a really nice way to play with my kids in a way that they really appreciate, and that I appreciate on a slightly different level,” Greiner says.
Greiner’s partner had already started hoarding cardboard before physical distancing was mandated (“there was a whole wad of it beneath the couch”), but an increase in deliveries due to the lockdowns compounded the collection. Old projects have to be surreptitiously recycled: Greiner says there is a “graveyard” of some of the bigger inventions on the family’s back porch – out of sight, out of mind until they become something else.
Anna Ryan-Punch and her 11-year-old son Luka have also been creating elaborate constructions with recyclables, though many of his projects have been set by his school inquiry class.
They included building a machine of his choosing out of ordinary household bits and pieces. He designed and built a zipline out of a cup, some marbles, a bull clip and string.
“We had to raid and rinse out a lot of the recycling bin,” Ryan-Punch says. “It ended up being pretty hilarious, despite us both going, ‘Oh no we have to build another thing’.”
Much more palatable to all involved were the cooking tasks, which required Luka to research something that interested him, draw a plan or recipe, and then follow it – with yields including scrambled eggs and chocolate chip cookies.
Some parents, meanwhile, have been going off the map by necessity. For artist Lily Mae Martin and her nine-year-old daughter Anja, following the school curriculum at home hasn’t been a great success, so they started self-directed learning.
Projects involved making paper dolls of the family together, using blocks to help Anja keep up with maths, and pulling apart an antique clock to study its mechanisms.
Martin also painted a series of pictures of native animals at her daughter’s request so they could both learn more about them.
“I think making kids feel safe and keeping their love of learning alive matters more at the moment,” Martin says.
What inventive things have you done to entertain your kids at home while physical distancing? Share your stories in the comments or email them – plus photos of your creations – with the subject heading “Isolation Creativity” to australia.culture@theguardian.com
