This paper presents two reflection activities that supported the creation of community and a sense of caring for students learning in an online environment in the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first activity, students indicated how they were feeling in terms of hope/despair, stress/calm and energy level in a “check-in” slide at the beginning of each online class. This enabled the educator to respond to how the class was doing in the moment. In the second activity, students met outside of the regular class structure in an online group called “Sketch & Kvetch” to talk about how we were all doing and create a sketch that was then shared with the group. Each of these activities had a positive impact on students in the pandemic.