Pandemic Home School Diary Day 1

Before I had kids, I thought I would be a homeschooling mom. Then I met my oldest extra-extroverted daughter and knew it was out of the question. Now, thanks to COVID-19, I am (along with tens of thousands of other parents) homeschooling for the foreseeable future. Here’s what we did on our first day.

Prep Time

We got word that Seattle Public Schools were closing about half an hour before the end of the school day on Wednesday, March 11. I was on a deadline for Seattle Times, so I told my kids to think of it as a long weekend. I made the kids finish whatever homework would have been due on Thursday and Friday, but otherwise gave them the day off. Then we had as normal a weekend as we could considering how many things were closed. I printed out the 2-week homework packet my daughter’s elementary school provided, and sketched out a rough outline of a homeschool day.

Home School High School

Having received no guidance from my oldest daughter’s high school, we started the day by logging in to Schoology and running through each of her classes. She told me what they were working on each class, and we decided how that would translate into today’s tasks.

It turned into 3 pages of geometry problems, reviewing for a chimeric chemistry test, and outlining essays for English and History. I also made her research online foreign language programs and send me a report. The goal was to see if a Chinese intensive during the break was a realistic alternative to Running Start at the community college next fall.

Home School Fifth Grade

For math, my fifth grader had to develop what her teacher calls an “Estimation 180.” It’s where you count a number of objects, create an image, and then challenge viewers to estimate the correct number. She chose mugs in our cabinet. She had trouble getting the image into a PowerPoint, so we let the task roll over to tomorrow.

For science, the first assignment in her packet was to write about what happens to leaves when they fall off trees. She spent about 30 minutes on it and rolled the rest over to tomorrow.

For English, she started a reading log, and chose an “assignment” book to track. She read about 30 minutes of “school” time, but has to log any additional reading throughout the day.

Combined Learning

After lunch, we did joint research on COVID-19. Together we read the Flatten the Curve website and the Washington Post social distancing simulation article. My youngest looked up the statistics for cases in Norway, since we always have more interest and empathy in places we’ve been.

Then we spent some time on various making sure they were set up with Skype and other apps/platforms necessary for the kids to keep in touch with their friends.

Other Tasks As Assigned

Before starting school, they had to start a load of laundry and take ownership of it all the way back to their closets. For “recess” they had to pick up the living room including cleaning the display cabinet. That meant taking out all the fragile items, washing them, cleaning the glass in the cabinet and putting things back in. I was heavily involved in this process, too, for the safety of my delicate souvenirs. We talked about provenance of the items: the Bristol Blue bowl I bought in Bath, England and safely carried home in a backpack; the porcelain doll I bought on my first trip to Japan and carried home in a twine-wrapped box; the teacups from their grandmother’s collection.

Free Time

In the afternoon, my teen called a friend and the two of them played a game together on their networked Switch consoles. My 5th grader started working on a Pathfinder role-playing game campaign that she hopes to play remotely with her friends next week. After 2 hours, they put a harness on the cat and took it outside, then played on the swingset until dinner.

After dinner, instead of watching tv shows, we used the ticket-holder link to stream the dress rehearsal of 1000 Pieces, the premiere of which Pacific Northwest Ballet had to cancel last weekend.

Before bed, we spent a few minutes practicing Morse Code together. (This is not COVID-related prepper stuff. We’re just super nerdy and thought it would be cool to know Morse Code. Then we did a meditation exercise on the Headspace app. (Nightly family meditation is a COVID-related exercise. We halfheartedly tried it before, so I already have a membership. But COVID stress is absolutely the reason I can get anyone to go along with it now.)

Freelance Work

It was a good day. My oldest even commented that she probably did at least as much, if not more, actual school work as she does during a normal day. But it was not a productive work day. I have three deadlines this week. The first one is Wednesday. I wrote the draft of that article over the weekend. Today, I edited that draft and turned it in.

I made a plan for the work I will try to get done tomorrow (and for the kids, too). I’m hoping that once we have more of a system in place, I can get back to work.