Friday, April 24, 2020

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 28

Today is the last day of week 6. I feel like Fiona in Shrek, the Musical:
I'm pretty sure we're on the "day number eight thousand, four hundred, and twenty-three" verse. But we're hangin' in there! TGIF, right?

My daughter is feeling better today, and my son has a couple of video classes, so I have high hopes that today will be a more effective day than yesterday. And if not, well, we have the whole weekend to recover and get back into gear. So let's get started!

7-8:30am: The big excitement of the morning was having a storage POD delivered to our driveway at 7:15am. My daughter wasn't particularly interested, but my son was fascinated by the remote-controlled hydraulic lift that hefted and then maneuvered the POD into place while the flatbed truck slid out from underneath it. Following all that excitement, we grabbed a quick breakfast and then got dressed, brushed, and washed and settled in for class.

8:30-9am: Since yesterday I focused on making sure that my son was close to finishing his work for the week, I had him work on finishing up his American Revolution questions while I worked with my daughter. We looked over her assignment list and I had to talk her out of focusing purely on the art and music projects and looking at the ELA, math, and science assignments. She started with her Epic reading assignment, which was to read for 20 minutes from their list of books and then answer some optional questions. She read a few different Earth Day-themed books. Epic has some audio books and some books that you read visually; I had her choose books she has to read to herself.

9-9:30am: My son chose to do reading on ReadWorks and Epic. Since we've all been having difficulties with our allergies this week, he's reading a book about allergies! Maybe we'll all learn something. He went on to a coding challenge after that. My daughter and I went back to her assignment list to see if there was anything else she needed to finish for this week. She was assigned to read "The Frog Prince." We had some technical issues with links not working, so we ended up going on to Zearn math.

9:30-10:15am: They opted to play Workout War together. It's a dreary, rainy day at the end of a long (even though it was short!) week, so I thought they could use some time to burn off energy and get some exercise. They experimented with making up their own rules; it was a good lesson on negotiation and compromise.

10:15-10:30am: Snack break and set up for trombone lessons!

10:30-11am: My son has an online trombone lesson, which means it's a good time for the rest of us to make ourselves scarce. (He's not too bad for a first-year student, but brass instruments are LOUD. It's just a fact of life.) So my daughter and I went upstairs and I quizzed her on math facts and then we read some more of "On the Banks of Plum Creek."

11-11:30am: My son finished up his trombone lesson and switched right over to his Challenge class meeting. My daughter and I continuing reading for a bit, discussed the author's point of view, and then I dismissed her a little early to clean her room. After all, neatness is a life skill, and she most definitely has yet to master it!

11:30am-1pm: Free time and lunch break!

1-2:30pm: The kids are still struggling a little this week, so I decided we'd earned ourselves a Friday movie break - an educational movie, but still fun to watch. We made some popcorn and snuggled around the TV to watch a very cool documentary on snow leopards on Netflix. It was especially interesting because it documented the process of filming, including getting to the leopards' territory and the difficulties encountered in finding a family of leopards and in filming them while in an incredibly remote and inhospitable part of the world. It was a good way to end the week.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Be good to yourselves and to those around you. We're all in this together.


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