I really wanted to help our grown children, especially all the daughters-in-law who were mainly home with the kids. And it seemed like a great way to spend time with the grandkids during lockdown. The grandkids live in Virginia and North Carolina, and I live in upstate New York. I have no experience with teaching. I wanted this to be fun and the lessons needed to appeal to kids from five to twelve years old. I did not have teaching resources and needed to do a lot of work, basically roaming around the internet, and organizing the information so that it could be presented within one hour over Zoom. The important objectives were to 1) help our adult children with children at home 24-hours a day, 2) spend quality time with our grandchildren doing something interesting, and 3) pass on some learning that was outside the distance learning (due to COVID-19) the children were doing with their schools.

I felt that if I could get a few, simple grandparents’ lessons together, it could be a resource for others. This weekly activity gave me an hour or more of interesting interaction beyond a regular phone or video call. We had beautiful photos and graphics to look at, a few facts to talk about, and each lesson ended with a step-by-step drawing. The drawing was something special that I have always done with the grandkids. These lessons were just for fun. Many times, the grandchildren stayed on the Zoom call for over an hour to continue the chat and talk about other topics for classes to come.

Also, during March 2020, there was a fantastic article in National Geographic, which we receive at home about wild honeybees titled “The Secret of Bees,”² by, Ingo Arndt and Jürgen Tautz with photos by Ingo Arndt. The article was remarkable, not only because of the wonderful photos, but because of the photographer’s story about how he accomplished getting the photos of bees inside a tree and successfully finishing the project. His stories are aspirational. My first lesson was based on this article.

I contacted the photographer through his website to let him know we were using this article for the Grandparents and Grandkids lesson about wild honey bees. I asked if the kids could send him a note about what they learned or to send their drawing of a honeybee. He was glad to learn his article was being used for this. The kids sent drawings to Ingo and his wife Silke Arndt, in Germany. They graciously replied to the kids with a photo of themselves and the drawings. They wrote to the grandkids “Don’t stop exploring and always remember that we have to take care of our nature, everywhere on the planet.” It was great. Since then, we have stayed in touch. The lesson about Pumas is also based on Ingo Arndt’s photography and his story about getting those photos. When I asked Ingo about doing this next project, he wrote “Yes, it would be lovely if you do also something with the pumas. Please feel free to use my pictures from this online gallery. Can’t wait to see the result :-)”

The other three lessons that are not based on Ingo Arndt’s photography were suggestions by the grandkids. On the internet I research a topic, gathered a few basic facts, and ways to draw. While doing this, I came across so many learning resources. In Fall 2020 as school opened, the New York Public Library sent out an email message to library members with links to many learning and teaching resources. One of them was “BrainPOP” which I used when putting some lessons together for the grandkids. Another fantastic site is “Available Toolkits” from the World Wildlife Fund³. Everything in all the lessons were created only for sharing with the grandkids. I compare what I did to casually sitting side by side with a grandchild and looking together at an article or at a computer screen. But the lessons needed to be more prepared and organized to work with a handful of kids and to be presented over Zoom.