COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 10

We've made it into double digits, hooray! And also, it's Friday, double hooray!!

Today's Spirit Week theme was Disney, so we dressed up as Disney characters. My daughter chose Belle, from Beauty and the Beast, and my son opted to be Prince Eric, from The Little Mermaid. (Yes, he is holding a dinglehopper.)

Wearing - and choosing - costumes was a natural lead-in to give them a shortened version of the theatrical costume lectures I had recorded and posted online last week (here and here), so that's how we started our school day.

7-8:30am: Get up, make and eat breakfast, clean up breakfast dishes, brush hair and teeth.

8:30-9am: Costumes! Choose and put on our Disney costumes, take photos, then change back into our "civvies".

9-9:30am: Costuming. I gave them a more interactive version of my costume lecture, linked above. My son was in a professional production of The Sound of Music last summer, so I used that as an illustration. We talked about how costume designers do their job in both amateur and professional theatre, and we also discussed the other costume occupations in professional theatre (i.e., patternmakers, tailors and seamstresses, wardrobe supervisors, and dressers).

9:3-10am: Occupations. Yesterday I had asked both kids a series of fun questions to post on Facebook, and one of their answers that surprised me was that when I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, neither of them had an answer. So we talked about different jobs they might get while they're still in school, as well as different types of occupations they might have as an adult. I also talked to them about my career path: volunteer and paid jobs I had as a young teenager, my first "real" job after I graduated from college, jobs I've had since. We had a good discussion about the different types of choices they could make for future jobs.

10-10:30am: Typing & reading. My daughter was intrigued by my mentioning that my good typing skills helped me to get work from a temp agency when I changed jobs once, so she asked if she could work on Typing Club, the online typing practice site they use at school. My son's teacher had recommended an audiobook, "The Tiger Rising" by Kate DiCamillo, followed by writing a summary of the book and a description of the character traits of one of the main characters. I had him listen to a few chapters, and we'll save the writing until he's read further in the book.

10:30-11am: Math. Based on his teacher's recommendation, my son watched Khan Academy's Introduction to Decimals video, CTC Math's Introduction to Decimals, and a video called Decimal Place Value for Fourth Grade, then he played decimal games on Splash Learn. My daughter's teacher recommended a math site called Greg Tang Math that has lots of math games. Since my daughter needs to work on her multiplication facts, she played a game called Kakooma to work on her multiplication facts, then I let her explore some of the other math games.

11am-1pm: Outdoors break and lunch. Both kids were begging for an early break, so I decided to let them play outside for a while before lunch, since it's a nice day. We didn't do any exercise yet today, so they can use a stretch break and some fresh air. And so can I!

1-2pm: Science. We had watched this video on how to make ice turn invisible using just salt and white vinegar (and water and ice, of course). We tried to replicate the experiment without much luck - and then my son noticed: Hey, the ice cubes he's putting in are crescent-shaped, and the clear ones he's scooping out are cubes! It's a fake-out!! Yup, we fell for a prank video. But we turned it into a great discussion of the importance of the scientific method, and recording your experiments in a way that lets others replicate them - or, in this case, prove that you faked it! We looked for some videos of REAL ways to make clear ice, but all the ones we found required you to have enough room in your freezer for a small cooler, which we don't, so we couldn't do them ourselves. But we did watch one of those videos - I chose this one, because the narrator is hilarious (possibly intentionally). And because we saw lots of people using the same - or very similar - methods, we agreed this was a little more believable.

2-2:30pm: Reading and journalling. I read them some more excerpts from my Kenya journal, then gave them time to write in their own journals. I gave them each a chance to read something they had written in their journals aloud. Both of them are struggling to understand how to write more than a dry list of facts, even with my prompts. But we'll continue working on that in the coming days.

2:30-3:00pm: Music. My son practiced his trombone while my daughter typed her journal into a Google doc, then my daughter practiced her cello.

And with that, the weekend has arrived! We have successfully completed our second full week of homeschool. No-one's killed each other, no-one's dissolved into tears for more than a few seconds, I haven't taken to drinking heavily on a regular basis, and I think we've all learned a few things, including some practical life skills. If we keep this up, I think we'll come through this crazy situation just fine. And you will, too.