Tag Archive homeschool

What a different two weeks makes. On a normal Thursday morning, I would go to yoga before work; the kids would both be in school; and their dad would be at a meeting downtown. Thursday March 12 was the first day my kids were home from school. Exactly two weeks later, Thursday morning found me doing yoga in the living room, following my teacher’s instructions on Zoom and choking on bunny fur. My oldest was at the kitchen table solving geometry proofs, and my youngest dragged her laptop to my office so she could listen to her math video without the distraction of overlapping audio. My husband took his meeting online from his office in the basement.

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.

I thought I’d have a lot more to say today. This week we were to start receiving more learning materials from the schools, and we were going to try a tag-team approach to the home schooling so I could get more work done. But actually, there doesn’t seem to be much to report. I guess the new becomes normal pretty fast. Here’s our new normal, as of Monday, March 23.

On Friday of our first week of pandemic home schooling, we hit a milestone. My teenager got stressed out about how much work she had to do. I’m simultaneously proud of and uncomfortable with that fact. That’s kind of the mood of the day, as it was both the most and least successful day so far.

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.