COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 60

By the numbers:
60 days of homeschool so far (counting today)
7 days until moving day (EEEE ONE WEEK FROM TODAY!!)
6 days until we close on the house
4 Google/Zoom meetings left this week
4 days of homeschool still to go (also counting today)
2 days until our first (and hopefully last?!??) Open House for this house

Lots of milestones today. SIXTY days of homeschool. ONE WEEK until moving day.

It's gettin' real, y'all.

My day today will be filled with neatening the house for this weekend's Open House appointments, boxing up anything we can live without for the next week, finalizing inventory for the movers, and trying not to freak out. Somewhere in there I'll try to make sure the kids learn something useful. Will probably throw some food at them at a couple of points throughout the day. All that is to set, set your expectations pretty low for today; I know I have.

Anyway, here's today's schedule.

7-8:30am: My calculations state that we have enough eggs, bread, butter, and syrup to have French toast for breakfast. My son requests scrambled eggs and toast, so I make both and go a little heavy on my daughter's syrup so I don't have to recalculate. You may think I'm kidding, but my husband asked me last night if I was trying to get rid of EVERYTHING consumable before we leave. Hahahahaha. He thought he was joking. My biggest accomplishment of the day was finishing off the 128-oz bottle of conditioner that I bought a year and a half ago. This is serious stuff, people. Where was I? Oh yeah, get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, clean up breakfast dishes, brush hair and teeth. (For the record, there is exactly enough toothpaste left in the tube for both kids to brush their teeth twice daily until the move.)

8:30-9:15am: This Sunday is "Youth Sunday," at our church, so the youth choir director set up an accompaniment recording so each kid can record him- or herself singing "This Little Light of Mine." I forgot to have them do it after they rehearsed it with her last Friday, so I'm having them review it, then we'll record each of them separately. I'm having my daughter do it first while I send my son back upstairs to tame his crazy hair. Although I'm tempted to leave it in the video because it is EPIC. One of the benefits of ridiculously thick hair is really impressive bedhead. My son recorded his first then I sent him to do read Robin Hood on my Kindle. My daughter struggled a little with parts of the song, and when I corrected her, she started to melt down, so her recording took more time and more takes than I expected. When I went to check on her brother, he was playing games and guiltily switched back to the home screen hoping I wouldn't notice. Oops, his reading timer just reset to zero and he's now sitting next to me, reading with the Kindle on the table where I can see the screen.

9:15-9:45am: My son is re-starting his half hour of reading, and my daughter is listening to Dragons Love Tacos on Epic. I had planned on getting some work done, but clearly I need to sit and supervise. Ah, parenting.

9:45-10:30am: Both kids are switching over to math. I asked my son to check for any specific math assignments from his teacher, but it was just Zearn, so he's doing 30 minutes on Zearn. After my daughter finished the books she was listening to, she checked her assignment list as well. She's tried to do a Numskill assignment (she doesn't get the pun) on Greg Tang Math, but there wasn't a link, and we couldn't find any problems using the skill that was described in the assignment, so after 10 minutes of frustration on both our parts, we canned that and she's just doing by 20 minutes of Zearn. I checked on my son and found that once again he had opened a second window and was watching a video instead of doing his work. Timer reset. AGAIN. Since I'm using the time I had set aside to clean the house to supervise him instead, guess who'll be helping me clean this afternoon instead of watching videos and goofing off? I just flipped over to watch an African LiveCam and there were two elephants challenging each other to a showdown. How very apropos. Also of note: The bigger elephant won. 

10:30-11am: My son reviewed his states and capitals with a posted study guide. He moved on to Lexia for 20 minutes. My daughter has moved on to an assignment to continue writing a persuasive speech about water conservation to present during her Google Classroom Meeting today. Neither of us has any idea what this assignment is and have never heard of it before, so either we both missed something or she blew off something that was discussed at a class meeting. I told her to just write up an argument about why water conservation is important and ways we as individuals can conserve water. We'll see if this is anywhere close to the actual assignment. When my son finished his time on Lexia, he solved this week's EstiMystery.

11-11:30am: My son is working on Math Playground. Then he took a virtual field trip to Universal Studios, Hollywood, along with reading a brief history. My daughter is writing in her journal. I asked her to write about herself - what she's doing and feeling - rather than simply describing her friends, as she usually does. She did finally describe a little about what being quarantined is like, and even described an outing with the drone that she took with her dad and brother a few days ago. I got her teacher's email reminder about today's class meeting, which including a short mention of the persuasive writing assignment. She mentioned that they could include a drawing with their presentation, so I had my daughter work on that until break time.

11:30am-1pm: At last, lunch break and free time! Which means I can finally get straightening and organizing.

1-2pm: Both kids have a class meeting, followed by some chat time. This is their second-to-last class meeting! Both will also have a final meeting at the end of the last day of school. We will all be incredibly relieved when that happens.

Well, the kids managed to get a little work done, I managed to get a little work done, we all still have some chores to do before the end of the day, and the thunderstorms that appear to be rolling in should knock beat the heat and humidity a little. There were a few rough patches all around, but we made it.