COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 8

We're all a bit laggy this morning, so we're focusing on doing mostly fun things today, lots of stuff in the format of games instead or worksheets or exercises. I also gave the kids their choice of live feeds and educational videos to watch. They're pretty much caught up with or ahead of their classroom work, so we don't need to worry too much about that.

7-8:30am: Get up, get dressed, make and eat breakfast, brush teeth and hair. Today's Spirit Week theme is "Christmas in March," so I'm wearing Christmas socks and a red shirt and my daughter is wearing her favorite Christmas onesie. My son considered wearing a Santa hat, but when we realized they were all in the attic, he opted out of today's theme (with my permission; it's not a hill worth dying on).

8:30-9am: Penmanship, spelling, PE. I had the kids do an Alphabet Scavenger Hunt inside the house. I set up a large whiteboard with two columns, and they had to go around the house and find an item beginning with each letter of the alphabet, in order. Rules were that you had to either physically touch the item (if it were reachable) or get as close to the item as you could and point to it. You then had to go back to the whiteboard and write it in your column. After they finished, we reviewing the spelling of the words and rewrote anything that was misspelled. Other than a few missed capital letters, the only mistake was the spelling of "chandelier" - and let's face it, that's not an easy one even for some adults!

9-10am: Music. Despite (or perhaps because of) my daughter's meltdown yesterday, she has been practicing the song we learned all morning and we decided we would take another crack at singing all three parts together and recording it for their music teacher. I must say, it came out pretty awesome! We finished early enough that I gave the kids free time to noodle around on whatever instrument or music app they wanted. My daughter played "Doe, a Deer" on the piano and my son played Song Maker on Chrome Music Lab. My daughter was curious about what her brother was doing, so she started working on Song Maker, too, then moved to doing karaoke with songs on Alexa. They were having so much fun that I let them keep playing past 9:30, when I had planned to move on to our next lesson. We had a quick snack break before we settled in for our science video.

10-10:15am: Science. We watched our favorite Facebook Live program, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy! Today's presentation was a book reading and a sing-along. It was shorter than usual, so we moved up our next scheduled activity.

10:15-10:45am: Health and hygiene. We watched a video on how hand sanitizer works and talked a little more about how important hand washing and social distancing is and how it prevents transmission of the virus. We talked about the difference between the terms "corona virus" and "COVID-19." We talked about the symptoms of COVID-19 and how doctors are treating them, including why medical professionals are concerned that we won't have enough equipment and supplies to treat all the patients who need treatment. We went on a few tangents and searched online for illustrations and explanations of how lungs work and how penicillin was discovered (and how it works).

10:45-11:15am: Math/reading. I gave the kids their choice of online math practice (which my son chose), reading more of Anne Frank's or my journal, or writing in their own journals (which my daughter chose). My daughter finished writing in her journal after only a few minutes, and despite much coaxing from me on additional information she could add, she was adamant that she had written all she had to say. So I had her do independent reading for the rest of the time, while my son was quite content to work on math for the full half-hour.

11:15-11:30am: I read to them from the Diary of Anne Frank and from my journal, and then we all decided we were ready for a break.

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

After lunch, I suggested that we could bake something together if they wanted, but after a brief debate between the two of them, they opted to play with the hamster for a while, read independently a little more, and then take the rest of the day off. And that's the beauty of homeschooling - sometimes, when you're not really motivated but you got a lot done earlier (whether "earlier" means two hours ago or two days ago), you can just end the day early and be that much more ready to begin the next day.