Pandemic Homeschool Diaries – Midweek 2

So far the second week has been marked by increased online activities from the kids’ teachers, and decreased direct involvement from myself. This has meant more independent work from the girls, with perhaps a bit of slacking thrown in. But I had four articles due this week (three down, one to go!) so the shift had to be made. Here’s how we did it.

High School

English

My teen finished Rainbow Rowell’s book Carry On for Ada’s Technical Books‘ young teen book club. Since the bookstore is currently online only, the meeting was rescheduled for next weekend on Zoom. She got a head start on next month’s book, Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu, which we got from Ada’s by mail order.

Her English teacher shared a link for Alejandro Zamba’s short story Reading Comprehension in the New Yorker. The link didn’t work, but by Wednesday she had a found the article, read it, and responded to the questions her teacher posted in an online seminar. Unfortunately, not many of her classmates did the same, so the text-based forum didn’t turn out to be very Socratic.

Math

She continued doing one page of geometry worksheet questions each day. By Wednesday, there were only 2 pages left. Both were proofs, which she had been putting off because “I suck at proofs.” So we expect to have to spend more time working on these last two pages together.

Chemistry

She finished all the chemistry homework over the weekend, so there wasn’t anything to do on Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday her teacher sent an email instructing everyone to set up new folders in One Note for the next unit, which will start Thursday.

PE

Holding still is not her strong suit, so she has continued to practice her off-ice routine when it’s dry enough outside (she doesn’t have enough room inside), any exercises her PE teach posts on Schoology, and her regular stretching/push ups/squats routine whenever she has a break.

Theater Tech

The streaming production of Into the Woods was really long, so it took a couple days to finish. On Wednesday she wrote up her notes about the set designs, but I haven’t seen them yet.

History

Her history teacher shared out a bunch of videos on communism, capitalism, and the cold war. As with English, the original links sent through the school’s platform didn’t work, but she found them on YouTube:

Capitalism and Socialism Crash Course

The Cold War: Crash Course

She had to fill out short answer worksheets about the information in the videos, but didn’t have to turn them in. I’ll read them tonight.

Fifth Grade

I think the fifth grader had a bit more trouble staying focused on school without less supervision. So we’re going back to making more specific assignments.

Science

Fortunately, she has superhuman focus on the projects that catch her interest, so we were lucky that it rained on Tuesday. This enabled her to find a worm in the yard and complete Mystery Science lesson #4. She spent a lot of time on it, even spending time on Google to determine whether worms had sexes and if you could keep one as a pet. The answer to both was ‘no’ so she named her worm Darworm before setting it free.

She also did about half a dozen “Science 180s” – short readings followed by questions about scientific topics – from her homework packet.

Math

She completed Mr. M’s Math Episode 2.

She watched the video for #3 but didn’t do the work. We talked about how that doesn’t count, and she will finish it tomorrow. She also did two pages of math worksheets on decimals.

Literacy

She thought her cursive worksheets were boring. Instead, she decided to write a short story in cursive. The resulting murder mystery, complete with courtroom confession – by the prosecutor! – made me laugh out loud even though this digression was the main reason she’s behind in math now.

We finally turned to the ReadWorks reading comprehension packet her teacher sent home two weeks ago. ReadWorks She did a good job on the one about Malala, answering the questions with good details and solid reasoning. But then she ignored the rest until I stepped in. On Wednesday she finished the one called “Brothers,” but I haven’t had a chance to read her answers yet.

She is about halfway through Caddie Woodlawn.

Free Time

The teen baked ginger molasses cookies on Tuesday. Over the weekend she had a Netflix party with her friends and watched the first Charlie’s Angels movie. She liked it so today she watched the second one before going outside with her sister and the cat.

The fifth grader had a Zoom playdate with her friends on Sunday. It was weird at first, but pretty soon they were performing theater to each other and the call lasted over an hour. On weekdays she alternated between playing games on Switch and playing outside on the swingset or with the cat. On Wednesday we reviewed Morse Code and learned the letter G. It’s dash dash dot. After hearing their dad on the phone, the girls asked questions and learned who Nancy Pelosi is. Both girls had a Zoom kung fu class on Tuesday.

Freelance

I’m finally getting some work done. I’ve turned in three articles so far this week, had four teleconference calls, and did blog maintenance. I also made it to yoga on Sunday and Tuesday. Yay me. Too bad about all those ginger cookies, though.

Covid Count

On Tuesday, the Washington Department of Health, reported King County has 1277 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 94 related deaths; on Wednesday there were 1359 cases with no new deaths, and a database slowdown caused by a 10-fold increase in the number of lab reports received.