COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 6: A New Approach

I spent some time over the weekend thinking about my approach to homeschooling. When we started, I was really modeling our program after what I'd done with my son when we homeschooled for a year  a few years back (really, two years; we did pre-k informally, then kindergarten formally). I had written schedules and lesson plans, although I was always willing to deviate from them. We did a mix of worksheets, field trips, hands-on projects, and themes. I chose some topics, and I let him choose some topics. He had already mastered 90% of the kindergarten material in Common Core, which is our state standard, so I wasn't even trying to follow the school curriculum.

But not only are we in a completely different position, where the school system is trying to keep all the kids in the same grade at an even level - which is basically treading water, practicing what they already know rather than attempting to progress and complete the term's curriculum - but their learning is in a context of ZERO face-to-face contact with peers or adults. One of my favorite parts of homeschooling originally was interaction with people outside of my son's age cohort; instead of talking to mainly other kindergarteners, he talked to docents in museums, librarians, store clerks and stockers, lifeguards, dogwalkers, everyone we met. Which, since we were out and about while the other kids were at school, was mainly adults. But now, there's very little interaction with anyone outside the family. And there's very little opportunity to play with other kids in the same sense that they normally play - no chance to work out arguments over who is "It" this time for Tag, or whether that ball bounced outside the lines, or who gets to go first in whatever game they're playing. Having two kids in the house, there is some small degree of problem-solving and working out relationship conflicts, but it's different when it's between siblings. Right now, online chats (and hopefully, video chats in the near future, now that we've mastered Zoom) are their only peer-to-peer social outlets.

So how to give them a sense of normalcy, a sense of control, a sense of actively participating in managing their own studies, and by extension, their own lives? Well, one way that I think will be very helpful to them is journaling. I would love to be able to go back in time and listen to what 7-year-old me thought of being trapped in my house for a week during the Blizzard of '78. I can't do that, but I can make sure that my children can go back, thirty years from now, and read what their 8- and 10-year-old selves though of being trapped in their house for however long during the COVID-19 Pandemic of '20. But since they've never journalled before, it makes sense to give them an example of a very compelling and readable journal that tells a story in a well-organized way, providing background on both the writer and the historical context.  And what better example than The Diary of Anne Frank? I was able to download the linked version on my Kindle for only 99 cents. It's not the best version (it was clearly scanned from a print version and there are a number of weird typos and OCR issues like "cl" coming out as "d" or "i" printing as "l", but since I'm reading it aloud, I just read what I knew it was meant to be, not what it actually said.), but it was good enough for our purposes.

So here's today's lesson plan and schedule:

7-8:45am: Get up. We're doing "Spirit Week Themes" this week, and today is Pajama Day, so we all changed into our coziest pajamas. I had taught my son how to make scrambled eggs a few days ago, and this morning he wanted to make them himself with minimal hints from me. He did fantastic! (And the eggs were PERFECTLY seasoned.) My daughter was in charge of English muffins and toast. It was so nice to be waited on!

8:45-9:15am: I talked a little about the world situation when Anne began writing her journal, then I read her first few diary entries out loud. We discussed the structure of her entries, beginning with introducing herself, giving a brief sketch of her life and where she lives, followed by an introduction of the various people in her life (mainly her classmaters), and then a description of what is currently happening in the world, and a little about how it affects her life.

9:15-10am: The kids started their own journals, modeling their content after Anne. My son chose to type his journal into a Google Doc; my daughter opted to write hers longhand in a bound journal she already owned. I was surprised and impressed by how happily they took to the writing, and what a good job they did in following Anne's model.

10-11:30am: We took a writing break to watch the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy's daily Facebook Live presentation. Most days, they read a shark-related book, then answer questions, but today they're doing a special presentation about what makes a shark a shark, including lots of facts about shark anatomy and physiology, so it was especially long and informative. (Tomorrow, they're hosting an interview with Fabian Cousteau, grandson of the famed undersea explorer and innovator Jacques Cousteau, who has followed in his famous grandfather's footsteps.) We took a brief snack break after the webcast, then we quizzed ourselves by completing the worksheet from the AWSC website.  I challenged the two kids to work together and to figure out how to research any of the answers they didn't know, either by looking back at the video or searching the website.

11:30-1pm: Lunch break and free time!

1-2pm: A teacher friend of mine clued me in to the virtual tour of the Anne Frank Annex, which is an absolutely spectacular website! Since we recently discovered how to project from my laptop onto our large living-room television, we put it up on the big screen and toured together. We read a few more entire in Anne's diary, ending right after her family moves into the annex.

2-2:30pm: Math. Instead of having them do worksheets, we did a "multiplication bee" similar to our spelling bee of the other day. They took turns answering questions, each getting questions at their own level, so my daughter answered facts up to about the 7s, and my son answered 7s and up.

2:30-3:30pm: Art & Music. The kids have been begging for more creative time, so I figured we could end the day with art. A friend had dropped off a jewelry-making kit for my daughter, which involves selecting and painting beads and charms to make a charm bracelet, so she chose that for her craft, and my son chose to do some more work on his recycled sculpture of a robot. I also asked both kids to spend some time practicing their instruments during this time, either the ones they're learning in school (cello and trombone) or some of the other instruments we have in our house, including piano, recorder, and xylophone. It was a good use of the time waiting for glue or paint to dry.

It felt like a nice, relaxed day today, with very little of what felt like "standard" schoolwork. And that's what I feel like home school should be right now. Keeping busy learning interesting things, keeping up with and slightly building on the subjects they've been learning at school, lots of breaks to work with our hands as well as our brains, and sneaking in learning practical skills (like cooking scrambled eggs!) that don't even seem like learning.

I hope everyone out there struggling with homeschooling recognizes the benefits to taking a more relaxed and less structured approach to learning. Some kids may really thrive with relatively rigid structures, but so many more will absorb better and keep up their interest levels if we follow their lead and stay less structured. Much like working from home vs. working at the office, homeschooling can be much more efficient than learning in a large, mixed-level classroom, so you can spend significantly less time and still get more done. Most of all, don't feel that you need to keep up with anyone else. My blog is not meant to be telling anyone how they should homeschool!! It's just an example, hopefully one among many, offering options that MIGHT work for you. Use what works, ignore what doesn't. There's no one right way to homeschool, and no-one can judge the best way for YOU to homeschool except YOU!

So don't worry - you've got this!