COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 7: Distance Learning

Although my kids' school district is not requiring online learning, teachers at all grade levels are posting curriculum and optional exercises to help maintain what the kids were working on prior to school closure, and to continue them along that path if possible. We've already incorporated bits and pieces of those suggestions into our home curriculum, but today, I'm going to try sticking mainly to the school's recommendations. Two additions, though: We're celebrating our own Spirit Week this week (someone posted it online; no idea where it came from), so yesterday was Pajama Day, today is Silly Sock Day, tomorrow is Christmas in March Day, Thursday is Social Distance Twin Day (dress like one of your friends and send them a picture!), and Friday is Disney Day. And second, I'm continuing with the reading of The Diary of Anne Frank, including having the kids write in their own journals, and also sharing with them a journal of a trip I took to Kenya in 1990 (and, if I can find it, my journal from when I lived in Zimbabwe for three months in 1988).

So, here is today's schedule:

7-8:30: Get up, eat breakfast, get dressed, brush teeth and hair, put on silly socks. Silly Sock Selfie on the couch.

8:30-9:15am: ELA. Last week, we finished reading "Stone Fox" by John Reynolds Gardiner, which was suggested by my son's fourth-grade teacher. As a followup, she suggested that the kids write a summary of the book, and then describe some traits of the main characters, including examples from the book. It was a little tricky since we didn't have a physical copy of the book to look back at, just a video of someone reading the book aloud, but we discussed it together and helped each other remember. They read their responses aloud and we reviewed punctuation, spelling, and grammar of the written responses together. Both kids still struggle with remembering to use capital letters where needed, and occasionally end marks as well, so I'm always careful to review their written answers to anything.

9:15-10am: PE. Both kids seem to be lagging a little today, so we need to get some exercise! I saw a link to some YouTube videos by a teacher named Joe Wicks, so we tried out this video today.  Whew, it was hard work but the kids loved it! We'll definitely be using his videos on a regular basis. My son especially loved that his warm-up and cool-down stretches are almost exactly the same as his gymnastics class uses, so it was a nice sense of familiarity and continuity. (My daughter especially loved that Joe has a cute accent and floppy hair.) The workout was a full 30 minutes long, and it took us a minute to get the video set up, so we gave ourselves a 10-minute break at the end of the hour before our next Facebook Live feed started.

10-10:30am: Today's Atlantic White Shark Conservacy's Facebook Live presentation featured Fabian Cousteau! It's a nice followup to their reading of a book about his famous grandfather, Jacques Cousteau, last week - which inspired my kids to do some research on Cousteau's career.

10:30-11:30am: Math. Since the kids are at very different math levels, it worked out well that their school website has online practice worksheets. They each used their Chromebooks to log into their school accounts and first review the last module they had worked on at school, and then moved on to the next module. Although I'm not posting these links, since they require a school login, there are plenty of online math sites that walk students through grade level exercises. We encountered some issues logging in to my daughter's account (her "restricted access" Chromebook was a little more restricted than we had intended), so she also spent some time writing stories and drawing, then playing other math games on my laptop while my husband played Help Desk and got her Chromebook up and running. Oh, those unexpected complications of homeschooling!

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

1-1:45pm: Music. One of the music teachers at the school suggested that the kids teach their parents one of the songs they learned at school, then asked the parents to teach their kids a song that THEY learned as kids. He also asked families to submit videos of the results! My kids swore that they hadn't learned any songs at school that my husband and I didn't already know (and they're probably not wrong), but we sang "Frere Jacques" together (in French and English) anyway. One of my favorite camp songs is a three-part song where all 3 parts are sung at the same time, with harmonizing melodies. The immortal lyrics are:
Part 1: One bottle of pop, two bottle of pop, three bottle of pop, four bottle of pop, five bottle of pop, six bottle of pop, seven, seven bottle of pop.
Part 2: Fish and chips and vinegar, vinegar, vinegar. Fish and chips and vinegar, pepper pepper pepper salt.
Part 3: Don't throw your trash in my backyard, my backyard, my backyard. Don't throw your trash in my backyard, my backyard's full.

I tried to teach it to the kids, and although my son managed to catch on pretty quickly, my daughter had a difficult time and ended up melting down. We canned that plan and took a little snuggle break. We'll try again tomorrow.

2-3pm: History and reading. I read them a few entries from my travel journals, then we spent some time reading some more from the Diary of Anne Frank. Finally, I gave them each some time to write in their own journals. I encouraged them to talk about the things that they like and dislike about not going to school and having to practice social distancing, and especially to feel free to share how this situation makes them feel. I'm also letting them decide whether they want to share their journals with me or not. If they don't want to share everything, I'll also give them opportunities to read me some of their entries that they're willing to let me hear.

3-3:30pm: Cooking. My son loves baking pumpkin pie and had initially requested making one as his reward for winning our spelling "bee" the other day, so I promised we could make one as soon as the ingredients I'd ordered had arrived. This time, he mostly coached my daughter, and I supervised and helped with some of the heavy lifting. We look forward to enjoying the fruits of our labor after dinner!

Tomorrow we'll start with math, since it kind of fell by the wayside for my daughter today due to our technical issues. And we'll start on the next suggested reading book, The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo. But I feel like we accomplished a lot today!