Kate Middleton talks self-isolation, children, photo project

Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, says she and husband Prince William face some of the same challenges as any parents self-isolating with small children away from other family.

"It's really hard," Kate, 38, the mother of Prince George, 6, Princess Charlotte, 5, and Prince Louis, 2, said Thursday on the U.K. chat show "This Morning." "We hadn't done a huge amount of FaceTime and face calls and things like that, but obviously we're doing that a lot more now, and actually it's been really great."

She said the family, widely reported to be staying at their country home, Anmer Hall in Norfolk, about 116 miles outside of London, tries to "check in daily with family members and speak to them about news and things like that, and in some ways I suppose we've got a lot more face time than perhaps we would have done before, but it is difficult. It's hard to explain to a 5- and a 6-, nearly 7-year-old, what's going on."

In a lament familiar to parents anywhere, Kate added that, "George gets very upset because he just wants to do all of Charlotte's projects. Making spider sandwiches is far cooler than doing literacy work," she said, referring to the typical Halloween snack of peanut butter and jelly on round-crusted bread with pretzel sticks for spider legs and chocolate chips for eyes.

Separately, the Duchess spoke of her quarantine-based initiative, Hold Still, that she said in an Instagram post Thursday she hoped would "help capture the spirit, the mood, the hopes, the fears and the feelings of the UK as we continue to deal with the Coronavirus outbreak."

Calling it free and open to all in the nation, the project, in collaboration with England's National Portrait Gallery, seeks to be "a snapshot of the UK at this time, creating a collective portrait of lockdown which will reflect resilience and bravery, humour and sadness, creativity and kindness, and human tragedy and hope."

A hundred Hold Still images will be featured in an online gallery in August, with each entry "assessed on the emotion and experience it conveys rather than its photographic quality or technical expertise," she wrote.