This home school thing has been, let’s say, interesting. These moms have taken it to task, and if we’re grading, they’re getting an A+. On the extracurricular front, here’s what Nandini Austin, Diana Zelkas-Kacherski and Mia Ljungberg Nevado are doing to stay entertained while staying at home.
Nandini Austin, Co-Founder, The Cocktail Architect
The Kids: Revel Morrisey, 6, and Zeal Gaya, 3 months
Favorite Family Night Activity
One of my passions is home cooking, and both my parents worked full time but always had a home-cooked meal on the table. So cooking and eating together in the Austin family is our daily ritual. I believe it’s never too soon to educate and inspire your kids to fall in love with cooking. Children need to understand where their food comes from, what its health benefits are, how it affects your body. I take Revel to the farmers markets, Chinese supermarkets and Indian spices shops so he gets to learn about new ingredients all the time. When we cook together, we talk about the medicinal properties of each ingredient, it’s worked great. Now, Revel has an open palate and is willing to try new foods. He loves crab, sushi and oysters. Our favorite dish to cook is salt and pepper squid. One thing he does not love as much as us is chili peppers, but hopefully, that will change in time. Usually, we research a recipe — we like Jamie Oliver — otherwise he helps me with my Mauritian dishes.
First family vacation or activity outside of the apartment you’re planning to take when we’re back to normal: Trip to Mauritius, where I am from, or my hometown, London
Diana Zelkas-Kacherski
The Kids: Rafaella, 9, and James and Jackson, 5
Favorite Family Night Activity
We’ve been doing this for ages, far before any of the pandemic lockdown, and that’s movie night with popcorn. The kids, as well as my husband and I, really look forward to it. Everyone wears a skin mask — yes, I even make my husband refresh his skin. For the adults, it’s 111 Skin, and Too Cool for School for the kiddos.
First family vacation or activity outside of the apartment you’re planning to take when we’re back to normal: Hamptons with the family, and London with no kids. I can’t wait.
Mia Ljungberg Nevado, Founder, LookUp Movement
The Kids: John John and Bo Bo
Favorite Family Night Activity
We are learning a new way of living, for sure, with our new isolated, digital lives. It is kind of a blessing and curse at the same time. I am beginning to think that the biggest threat to our health and future is how addicted we all are to our screens and phones, and COVID-19 isn’t helping, so it’s nice to carve out time to turn them off completely and do something as a family together.
In our family, we love creative nights — in Sweden we call them “pysselkvällar.” Once a week, we turn all screens and phones off, put on some relaxing music and candle lights, and take our creative box that is full of papers, scissors, tape, glue, magazines, pens, crayons and colorful feathers.
One of our absolute favorite “pyssel” is making vision boards. I was so lucky to be invited to a vision board evening with dear girlfriends hosted by the vision board expert Karen Quiros, which was such a great and beautiful experience that I decided to pass it on to my sons, and they LOVE it. It helps us all to dream and forget about COVID-19, at least for a short moment. We must keep dreaming! I believe vision boards are a powerful tool for all of us to achieve our dreams.
First family vacation or activity outside of the apartment you’re planning to take when we’re back to normal: I live between Sagaponack in the Hamptons and Sweden, so I will likely go home to see family in Sweden when we can all travel again.
