During the current epidemic, a sweet and fun game is being played all around the world and in every state to soothe and amuse youngsters. You may also get involved. All you have to do is hang a teddy bear or other stuffed animal, or a drawing of a rainbow, in your window.
Home from school these days, kids are again. It’s a tense period for them, especially when compared to adult life. But tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of individuals and small business owners across the United States and at least 12 other countries are doing one simple thing to assist: they’re displaying a teddy bear or plush animal in their windows.
This may not seem like much, but it will have a bigger impact on your neighbourhood’s children than you may imagine. Not only are schools and playgrounds closed owing to the coronavirus, but so are shopping malls, ice rinks, movie theatres, toy stores, and basically any other location where kids congregate to socialize. Even McDonald’s play areas that were available as an alternative to open during inclement weather are now closed.
What are some other things that kids may do for fun? They can go on a walk or a drive with their parents. Those activities, which were previously thought to be quite dull, become considerably more interesting when you turn them into a teddy bear search. That’s precisely what children are doing all over the world. They compete with each other to see how many teddy bears or other plush animals they can discover, and they keep track of how many they find. They snap photographs of the most unusual and remarkable ones.
Many of these images are shared on the Teddy Bear Hunt Facebook group, which appears to have been started by a 12-year-old Iowan named Tammy Buman with her 8-year-old sister and parents. It currently has over 10,000 members. “I think it allows people to focus their attention on something else,” she informed The New York Times. According to reports, the game was inspired in part by British author Michael Rosen’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, in which he is likewise suffering from severe flu-like symptoms.
Some kids as old as 13 and as far away as New Zealand say they look forward to going for a walk each day in order to see how many stuffed animals they can find. There have been no reports of individuals utilizing Google Street View to search for bears in strange places, but it’s only a matter of time. (Of course, you lose the benefit of getting some fresh air and exercise by doing it that way.)
It’s simple to get involved. Place a teddy bear in front of a window or doorway with a street or road, or in front of a storefront or office, even if it’s closed these days. If you have children, getting them to help construct a teddy bear display is an excellent method to keep them occupied while avoiding the coronavirus and the most recent video game. If you don’t have any stuffed animals, don’t worry. Instead of displaying a picture of a rainbow on their windows or doors, others have used tape to draw one.
All of these things convey the same message to children and others in their communities. “We’re here. We’re all linked. We’ll all get through this together, even if for now we must stay separate.”
