Katie Peebles is grateful her two teenagers are able to take care of themselves and get their schoolwork done from home during the coronavirus outbreak. She can’t imagine what it’s like for parents with young children who need entertainment and supervision.
“My heart goes out to them,” she said.
That’s why Peebles shared an idea for a bear hunt with her neighbors in the Great Oak subdivision. Everyone who got the message through the neighborhood’s Facebook page or by word-of-mouth was asked to put a stuffed animal in their front window.
There are at least 20 homes in Great Oak participating. Children can walk the neighborhood with their parents and hunt for the animals in the windows. Or anyone can drive through Great Oaks and do the same.
It is one way to maintain social distance while keeping children entertained.
There’s another bear hunt developing in downtown Hopkinsville.
Kiley Killebrew, who owns J. Schrecker Jewelry on Main Street, has spread word of the Great Hopkinsville Bear Hunt to downtown merchants, restaurants and property owners.
Killebrew put a big bear wearing a tutu in the jewelry store’s window. Across the street from her, Jim Creighton set a plump blue bear in one of the chairs displayed at his custom woodworking shop.
“Let’s try to get those bears out by Friday, if possible,” Killebrew wrote in a message to her downtown neighbors.
She added, “Please post photos of your bears and details about the Bear Hunt on your websites and social media. Also, include the hashtags: #HoptownHideAndSeek and #DowntownHopkinsvilleBearHunt.”
Other stuffed animals work, too. Peebles put a seagull, a flamingo, an elephant and a fox in her windows. The public library has a rooster in one of its windows.
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Teachers and parents were looking for other creative ways this week to break up the home routine for children. Schools have been out since March 16 and students won’t return until April 20 — if not later depending on the length and severity of the outbreak. Students are doing lessons at home, mainly with online tools but public schools students also have the option of using paper lessons.
University Heights Academy’s lower school teachers created a car parade Thursday morning and traveled around to several Hopkinsville neighborhoods to see their students, who gathered in front lawns and parking lots to wave and cheer as they passed.
The teachers decorated their vehicles and departed from the school with a police escort. Head of School Beth Unfried led the caravan.
In other ways, people around town were looking for ways to help children pass the time.
At the Hopkinsville-Christian County Public Library, at Ninth and Bethel streets, there is a cart outside the main entrance with free books. They do not need to be returned, the library said.
The Pennyroyal Area Museum created several dozen take-home history kits for children and set them outside the front door of the East Ninth Street building. Those went out late Thursday morning and most were gone by noon.
Each kit includes items for an activity that coordinates with a Facebook post, said Alissa Keller, executive director of the Museums of Historic Hopkinsville-Christian County.
One kit has ingredients for green slime, and children can go to the museum’s Facebook page to learn about the 1955 Kelly Green Men incident, a purported alien encounter in northern Christian County.
Another kit has quilting materials to make a cloth coaster called a mug rug.
There’s a gardening lesson in a kit with Pennyroyal plant seeds.
The fourth kit is simply a small notebook called the Quarantine Chronicle. Keller hopes children with treat the notebook as a shareable journal and return it to the museum later. The stories collected in the journals could become important artifacts for the community, she said.
(Jennifer P. Brown is the editor and founder of Hoptown Chronicle. Reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org.)
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
