COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 38

As we get closer and closer to the date we plan to take photos and videos of the staged house, the chaos gets more and more...chaotic. Today we're working around teams of painters in 3 different rooms plus a couple of tiling guys who are also installing baseboard covers in the bathroom and new attic stairs. Which means that literally the only rooms in the house that aren't being worked in are my son's bedroom, the basement office where my husband is working, and the laundry room (which currently has a couch standing up in the middle of it). And thunderstorms are expected to roll through, so sitting on the porch or in the backyard is not likely to be an option. It's a distinct possibility that we may end up sitting in my car at some point, although even that isn't a great option because with all the workers' trucks parked outside the house, I don't think my car can get close enough to get a WiFi signal. But we'll manage somehow.

Here is how we ended up managing today:

7-8:30am: One child was up at the crack of dawn, the other wandered out looking for breakfast at around 7:45ish. Grilled English muffins has become a favorite of late, so I'm thinking that we might need to take a crack at making homemade English muffins over the next day or two, or at least English muffin bread. Everyone was required to be dressed by 8am when the painters were coming, but hair and teeth brushing may or may not have happened by the start of school at 8:30. Not a hill I'm going to die on today, especially since I'm not entirely sure I remembered to brush my own.

8:30-9am: Both kids logged on to their Google Classrooms for the week's assignments. My daughter chose to start with Epic reading; my son is doing a math EstiMystery. Once he solved the EstiMystery, he moved on to a series of math logic puzzles (i.e., simple pre-algebra games). Every now and then he challenges me with one. They're not that hard, but I do find that I need to write down each answer as I figure it out (there are usually 4 or 5 unknowns to determine), otherwise I forget what I've already solved. I'm impressed that he can solve them without taking notes. At this moment they're both stretched out on my daughter's bed with their headphones on. We'll see how long this arrangement lasts (peacefully).

9-9:30am: My daughter is continuing her Epic reading; my son is now reading about women's soccer on ReadWorks. And suddenly also something called "vulture bees." Which are fascinating, and also kind of gross (kind of like my son himself), and have introduced me to the term "meat honey." What has been learned cannot be unlearned. And then he moved on to a Revolutionary War project. Thank goodness for the decrease in violence level.

9:30-10am: My son is working on fractions and decimals, as assigned by his teacher. My daughter is working on math on Freckle and Math Playground. The tilers have arrived and are chipping out the cracked tiles, so it's a good thing the kids both have headphones, even though they don't really need them for math. I'm wishing I had a pair, myself. Good thing they're only removing 7 or 8 tiles. In other news, I just ran down to the basement to get a new battery for my computer mouse, and I had to go outside and back in again to get around all the workmen, then when I went to go back they had moved and I was trapped in the living room for 5 minutes or so. A very interesting and chaotic day, indeed.

10-10:30am: Facebook Live time! Morning Circle Time with Miss Tracey and Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. Not really part of school curriculum, but it's become a nice tradition, and it's certainly good learning. My daughter took a 15-minute break after circle time.

10:30-11am: My daughter is doing independent reading. More Superfly. Wonder what insect-related questions will come up today? My son is doing some reading for his Challenge class. The current peace and quiet from both children, the workmen, and even the hamster is a little disconcerting. But I'm rolling with it.

11-11:30am: I read some more of On the Banks of Plum Creek to both kids. We we just about to start the chapters on Nellie Oleson, so I thought they would both find that interesting. Laura Ingalls Wilder includes some wonderful descriptions of the sorts of toys and dolls that the children played with, so it was an interesting comparison to the sorts of toys and dolls that kids play with today. There were also some good descriptions of the differences between Laura's house and furniture, which were mostly hand-made by her Pa, and Nellie's house and furniture, which were all "boughten," since her father owned a store. It led to an interesting discussion about social classes and the whole town-vs-country conflict, including the idea of "better" vs. simply "different". Hopefully we'll get to discuss this further as we get further along in the book.

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time. We're still kind of trapped upstairs until the workers take a break. I was about to designate myself the lunch-bringer to avoid multiple trips past the fresh tiles, but my husband just appeared to say that he needed to run a quick errand and would pick up lunch. So we put in our orders for McDonald's! I'm not generally a big salad-eater, but with grocery shopping limited to once a week or less, a fresh salad sounds incredibly appealing and although I'm not a big fan of McDonald's food, my mouth is watering thinking of the Southwest Chicken Salad in my future. But then my hopes were dashed when my husband called to say that McDonald's is not doing salads so I got a buttermilk crispy chicken sandwich instead which is heaps of grease and salt but yay comfort food. I get credit for trying to eat salad, right?

1-1:45pm: My son has a Google Classroom Meeting with his teacher and the rest of his class. He told his teacher we were moving and she said she's going to email me. Not quite sure if it's just a "we'll miss him" thing or if it's a "Here's what you'll need to do to transfer his records to another town" or a "These are the skills he needs to master to officially complete 4th grade," or a "If you guys are moving before the end of the school year and you keep him in my class for the rest of the year the police will come and arrest you and your whole family for fraud" thing. Probably not the latter. (I hope.) My daughter just had a total meltdown while working on a math problem that she's supposed to answer via FlipGrid video. I talked her through the problem (why is it that word problems are so easy when the numbers involved are under 10 but so difficult when they have 3 digits??) and she figured it out, but puddled up and needed a break before making her video. Normally I'd work a little harder to get her to suck it up (she tends to fall apart whenever anything is the least bit difficult), but I just got a little teary myself when I realized I'd had my husband order the wrong type of baseboard register covers (not to mention 16 other issues we've come across while inspecting the new house and fixing up this one), so we're all cutting each other a little slack today. I'm only surprised that it took this long for all of us to hit the meltdown point.

So, it was kind of a rough day emotionally, but we checked a few things off all our lists, the majority of the workmen marching through the house will be gone tomorrow, and I'm planning comfort food (and possibly another loaf of bread) for dinner tonight, so we'll soldier on. In the immortal words of Scarlett O'Hara, "After all, tomorrow is another day!"