Monday, March 16, 2020

COVID blog - Day 3 - School


So this is it… the first day of (at least) 2 weeks of e-learning.  Impromptu homeschool.  The twins have MFW afternoon preschool.  The Girl is in first grade.  And The Baby runs his own self-paced leadership seminars throughout the day.  Let’s do this. 

The difficulty here isn’t necessarily providing the kids (The Girl in particular) with activities—there are plenty out there.  The difficulty is how to keep them organized and out of each other’s business long enough for some sustained learning to occur.


We tried to make a schedule – based on this widely shared visual.  I like the inclusion of chores, creative time, and outside time… I am not a fan of throwing kids in front of a TV for two straight hours before they go to bed.  So we shifted it to try to meet our needs and gave it a shot.  The first attempt at many.

I’d say mostly it went pretty well.  I’m working from home so could help in a limited capacity with high-need transition times, but mostly it was Kelly just putting forth a herculean effort, per usual. 

I’m sure I’ll include more details about homeschool-e-learning in the future.  As a former teacher, my views on the societal value of teachers is not unbiased… but in short, I think the vast majority of teachers are remarkable and do immensely important work with less than sufficient recognition.  I think many parents will be confronted with just how difficult some of this work is, especially as homeschools starts to move from “practice what you already know” to “we need to develop a new understanding about something you haven’t previously encountered.” 

All that to say, if I could step off my soapbox, I feel fortunate and grateful that The Girl has had such a great experience so far in first grade this year.  I am routinely impressed at how much she has learned and how much she’s improved some essential academic skills.  Case in point, her reading.  At the beginning of the year, it was a slow process to read even very simple books.  But now she is just plowing through chapter books.  She’s been on a Magic Treehouse kick – she starts and finishes the book the same day.  She can discuss the plot, make predictions, identify clues… all sorts of stuff.  It’s really pretty great.

That’s my big takeaway from Day 1 of e-learning/homeschool/whatever… I’m grateful The Girl is such an avid reader and that she enjoys it so much.  It’s so fun to see.

One last thing that I’ve also been enjoying (I’ll try to share things like this periodically) is Jarrett Lerner’s website.  His free drawing activities are really fun for all ages, and he has great writing/thinking prompts… it’s a gold mine.

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