COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 55

By the numbers:
55 days of homeschool so far
14 days until moving day
13 days until we close on the house
9 days of homeschool still to go
1 hour until the house cleaners come one last time

I see progress being made! We'll try to keep it going today, although the housecleaners are coming at 9:30, I have a meeting at noon, and my son has an online meeting at 1, so things will be a little uproarious today.

7-8:30am: Get up, get dressed, have breakfast. I did some neatening up around the house and asked both kids to neaten up their rooms, but their idea of "neat" and my idea of "neat" are not the same (and even my idea of "neat" is significantly different than my husband's idea of "neat"), so we'll do some more supervised cleaning when school starts.

8:30-9am: We did a sweep of the house as a group, starting with their individual bedrooms. I gave them a refresher on how to make a bed and had them each make their own. They picked up and put away any clothes that were on the floor (there are ALWAYS clothes on the floor) and tucked toys and shoes in their closets. We cleared the bathroom counter (after doing a moisture check of toothbrushes and making everyone who failed brush their teeth) and made sure there were no toys in the bathtub (there are ALWAYS toys in the bathtub). We walked through the kitchen and the playroom to clean up any junk that was lying around (there is ALWAYS junk lying around), then we gathered our laptops and set up at the picnic table in the back yard, so we would be out of the way for the cleaners.

9-9:30am: My daughter started with Zearn math and then moved on to the Math Playground and Adapted Mind websites after her daily 20 minutes on Zearn was up. Before my son started his work, he read aloud to me a page his teacher posted asking the class to post (anonymously) compliments to their various classmates. Many were sweet, some were funny (one student got a lot of compliments on his "crazy hair"), but all were uplifting. My son was very proud that his classmates described him as smart, helpful, and kind, and I was just as proud. As a kid who had struggled with fitting in with his peers in earlier grades, I was delighted to see how his classmates view him, and I'm sure he was as well. Now he's working through his list of math assignments, starting with "complete the task cards" and then moving on to watching a video about Mahatma Ghandi. There was supposed to be a reading as well, but the link is incorrect. I told him he could do some independent research if he needed additional information to answer the questions at the end of the assignment (which he needed to do).

9:30-10am: My son is back to math with a "pattern blocks" exercise, followed by some "match-up math" challenges. My daughter is reading on Epic. I am being entertained by the antics of the local chipmunks. I am also being serenaded by the local mockingbird, who has been at it steadily since 4:30am. It's rather impressive.

10-10:30am: My daughter is watching a video lesson on fractions and doing some exercises using what she learned. Apparently the video asks them to collect items around the house as illustrations, so she's using rhododendron leaves. My son is watching Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. He's learning about dogfish sharks and I'm having a flashback to my Invertebrate Zoology squalus dissection class in college. But in a good way.

10:30-11am: My son is working on more math exercises posted by his teacher; my daughter is still working on her fractions lesson.

11-11:30am: My daughter is taking a water conservation quiz, then doing independent reading. (She wanted to do Typing Club was for some reason it wasn't loading.) My son is doing his 30 minutes of Zearn for the day.

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time. I have a Zoom committee meeting at noon so I tried to get the kids fed (or, even better, feeding themselves) before that started. Both kids wandered through the kitchen during my meeting and seemed to linger in the general vicinity of the fridge and/or microwave, so I assume they both fed themselves at some point during the break.

1-2pm: My daughter has an online class meeting; my son and I are working on having him film part of a fundraising video for a regional theatre group that he performed with last year, as Kurt von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Costumes and props are optional, and given that we don't have a lot to work with since most of our belongings are in a POD parked in a storage lot somewhere, we did the best we could with a dress shirt and a borrowed pair of Dad's suspenders and bowtie. (And, as my son noted, a significant amount of Mom-spit-as-hair-pomade.) Both kids were done at around 1:30pm, so my son studied his states and capitals for the rest of the time while my daughter did some additional independent reading.

We're also giving ourselves credit for P.E., because as soon as at least part of the pool is in the shade, we're all going swimming!!