These are our days.
The days of quarantine homeschool.
The days we’ll never forget – but I figured I might as well snap a picture to aid in my memory.
Computers and ipads are in high demand these days. Hallie and Hunter have overtaken my office with their school work.
Briggs, Cannon and Bennett sit at the kitchen island and do their learning activities. Briggs’ preschool teacher has gone above and beyond and I’m going to credit my sanity during this time period to her online preschool class. He is totally occupied and it gives me the much needed time to focus on teaching/helping the other kids.
All the kid’s teachers have done their best to adapt and roll with it, and even then, they’re just providing resources for us to pick and choose from. We’re making the best of the situation and I’m fully taking this opportunity to understand my kid’s needs in school. Never have I had a better understanding of how I can help with their learning environment and learning style – not to mention where they need additional enrichment. It’s eye opening. So far it’s been a positive experience and no one has been expelled!
Here’s some resources that has made our quarantine/home school manageable:
A big shout out to Khan academy for teaching my kids math – there’s not a lot of fluff with their program but I really love it.
Art for Kids Hub on youtube has saved me many times – art class is the highly anticipated class that all the kids enjoy together.
DuoLingo is keeping my spanish speakers engaged, I think it’s time for me to start spending time on the app.
I grabbed a free class code on instagram for Stop motion kids camp and it’s kept my older kids entertained for hours. I love they are learning new skills.
Why are your schools not allowing these grades to count? Defeats the purpose a bit for the homeschooling. Our kids have school assignments each day and they are graded. Stay well 🙂
That is the million dollar question. They are asking that kids stay engaged and complete assignments, but at the end of the day the third quarter grade will be used for fourth quarter. For those that didn’t have a great third quarter grade, they can use this time to complete assignments and improve their grade (for the older grade levels). But if they never complete one assignment during the distance learning time they can’t be penalized. I don’t understand it. One thought is our school district is very socioeconomically diverse and I think there may be concern that not everyone has a great learning environment at home and they don’t want to add pressure or stress to already difficult situations. For this purpose they don’t want anything to be required learning. The district hasn’t given an explanation one way or another but several teachers have alluded to this idea. In our home, we’re treating all assignments as required learning and I remind my children that what they’re learning now is just a building block for what they’ll learn in the future. I’m sure there’s going to be some review next fall when every one returns but any exposure to concepts is going to help them understand it better.
@wendymac on Instagram has an amazing drawing class every day. My kids love it.
Thanks, I’m excited to check it out!
Amanda.. It counts that they do learning. They will lose their skills if they don’t work on any academics during this time. But it should not count toward the grading system. I’d like to remind you some kids are home and their parents are essential workers like nurses or truck drivers or grocery store cashiers and can’t hand hold their kids through the process after a long day or if they are even at home. Some healthcare workers have been keeping themselves in a different part of the house for weeks. Or they are home with a parent who wishes they were are work but aren’t and can’t make rent. Do you really think the nurse on a 12 hour shift who can’t go home for fear of passing the virus she was likely exposed to at some point needs to worry her 8 and 14 year old’s transcripts right now? Do you think it’s fair the kid with the parent with the high school diploma helping them competing with the kid with the parent with an advanced degree who has been staying home for three years already? For the most part there will not be summer school so how would the kids even make up the grades if “counted”. These things happen less often since we have shots for many things that 70 years ago would cause all the schools parks in a given county to be closed for fear of polio or some such disease. This situation has reminded us what the world used to be like. Private schools want to collect tuition still. I hear they are making people crazy trying to make them recreate the typical school day. It just doesn’t take 7 hours at home with each kid working on their own not waiting for their classmates to finish their papers, changing in between classes, lunch isn’t an entire period long… Families who normally homeschool also pick out their own curriculum and adapt to the learning styles of their kids and teaching styles they are capable of. This is very different. It’s the classes sending a particular assignment to be done a particular way home. I’m thrilled they just want to see a sincere effort to do work so all skills are not lost by fall. It also occupies part of the day. I know our district in IL loaned chrome books to families but I am sure not every household has one for every student. Some got one for their two kids to share. Not every district has a one to one program when it comes to devices. Not all kids have home libraries and the public and school library are off limits currently. For the families out of work they can’t buy books in the next reading level for their now housebound emergent reader.