Pandemic Home School Day 4

Day four of pandemic home school. We’re starting to hear from some of the kids’ teachers, and starting to figure out a few things about time management. A new normal is still a long way off, but I’m starting to get an idea what it will look like.

Home School High

English

My teen interrupted me to say that the book In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez only has 12 chapters and an epilogue. I told her to decide for herself how to best use her time – finish today or break it up. She chose to read one chapter today and finish the book for tomorrow.

Her English teacher usually has kids read a few chapters, choose a quote from each chapter, and then write an open-ended question from each chapter. He uses the questions to guide a Socratic seminar in class. Since no one else in the family has read the book, we can’t have a seminar. So I think I’m going to have her write short essays next week to answer her own questions.

PE

Thursday is usually a block schedule at her school, so she gets a really long workout. Her PE teacher was online earlier in the week with a message that he would be posting activities, but there wasn’t anything posted for today. So she followed a video to do some stretching and then did some squats and pushups for strength-building.

Geometry

She seems to have enough stamina for about one page of her geometry handout, and at that pace the handout will last another week. So for now, a page a day of geometry holds.

Fifth Grade

Math

Yesterday her math teacher posted a video. Today we watched the video. It started with an estimation 180 submitted by a classmate (how many pieces in this Lego set?). Then he set up an exercise of counting by 3/4 and writing the numbers in a 3-row grid. He did the first two columns and asked students to complete the grid, then write up their observations.

It was a really simple little video, only a few minutes long. But she likes this teacher and really appreciated feeling like he was still her teacher even though school was out. Knowing she would turn it in made the math more interesting, and over lunch she commented on how much she was going to miss her teachers when she goes to middle school next year.

We were way off on the estimation. She finished the counting grid, and will write up the observations to submit by email to her teacher tomorrow.

Science and Social Studies

She spent about 20 minutes playing with the U.S. geography quiz app.

Then she wrote up her findings from the food chain observations she did outside yesterday.

Reading and Art

I’m not sure when she did, since I never saw her reading, but she finished The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. At her sister’s suggestion, we picked Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink for her next book.

Then she did art for a couple hours. She’s working an a comic about two princesses trapped in a tower because their kingdom is being invaded by the kingdom of Coronaville. I haven’t read it yet because it’s not finished.

Systems Theory

Even though they still came in with questions every five minutes, I liked the dry erase approach to getting the kids started in the morning without my having to sit with them. We also realized that since both parents are working from home, there’s no reason that only one of us is helping with school work.

So today when they were about done with school work and my husband was logging off from his job, we had a short family meeting. We ran through what each kid is working on and made a plan for what they need to do tomorrow. Now that everyone knows what’s up, they can ask either parent for help, and won’t need as much explanation about what the dry erase list means. I hope.

House

I really meant to finish cleaning the entryway – clear off the buffet, get down to one coat per hook on the rack, and clean the floor under the furniture. But my husband was still dealing with the electronics from yesterday that needed to be charged and wiped before donating. And I was actually getting some work done and didn’t want to stop. So except for folding some towels, the kids got a pass on housework today.

Free Time

The teen spent her free afternoon on the Switch again.

The little watched a bunch of gatcha animated music videos. Then I noticed what she was up to and even though it’s free time I was like ‘ugh’ so to distract her, I showed her the Google Arts & Culture museum virtual tours that I’d discovered for an article I’m working on. She browsed that a bit then worked on her Pathfinder game.

After dinner we walked the cat in the back yard. I pulled some blackberry and the girls played with hula hoops.

Freelance

I was kind of on a roll today. Wrote first drafts of two articles that are due soon, connected with a potential source, sent inquiries to two more, and wrote a blog post.

COVID Count

According to the Washington State Department of Health, on March 19 there have been 693 cases of COVID-19 in King County, and 60 resulting deaths.