Considering how limited and even restrictive time at home may be, ideas for activities that fit the schedule and situation are a gift.   Staff and board members have come up with a Special Edition of our Newsletter.   They turned out to be “right on time”, what with these cold days and children off from school. Here are a few suggestions from that issue.

For an apartment:  (From E.D. Luz Nereida Horta):

• Mattress on the floor, jumping for the shoeless only!

• Putting away groceries

From Teacher Brenda Werner:

• Running in place, socks only, lifting knees high and moving rapidly.

• Walking the “tight rope”, really just a tape across the hallway floor;

• Following a low impact video

From Board Member Sparky James:

• Helping a neighbor or relative clean up yard or sidewalk

• A walk to the park

• Help make dinner, set table, make dessert, according to ability.

This tip came from a nurse at Merwick when I was getting ready to come home after having my knees replaced.  I needed to continue building my leg muscles and was given some sitting exercises to do, lifting my legs, using weights.  “Use a bag of beans”, she told me.  That suited the Pincher to a “T”.   We already had a variety of dried

beans in the bottom drawer, honoring my attempts to make rice and beans as good as Gloria Perez (never happen).   Penny cut the feet off of some socks, wrapped them rest around some beans, tied some knots, and voila!   I was in the leg-lifting business!

We are still in shocked disbelief, hardly able to comprehend the enormity of the disaster that has struck our world.  Comforting, at least, is the degree of the response from almost all sectors.   Children who are witnessing this (and they do) are less anxious when seeing their families and communities caring and acting.  Even more helpful is when given opportunities to lend a hand.   Examples are making and selling baked goods to make money to send to the agency of choice.  Children relate well to making

food used to provide food to the hungry.

In the meantime, we go on with our lives in as close to normal a way as possible.   I feel as if I am living on two levels:  At one level I am intensely aware of the suffering, almost to the point of becoming demobilized; at another level, I am aware that I must, we all must, attend  to our regular lives, with the safety and well-being of all around us in mind.

There are, as you recall, at least six ways to pronouce “ough” in the English language, so hopefully we can forgive the young English-speaking scholar if he writes:

“Hough Nough, Broughn Cough” instead of “How now, brown cow”.

Following this guide, here is the penny rhyme.

I once heard of a talented cough,
Who’d kick up her heels, then take a bough.
I don’t know why nor did I ask hough.
But she always milked the approving croughd.

Bettie Witherspoon is a former executive director of Better Beginnings, which has provided affordable child care to the East Windsor/Hightstown area since 1967.