Tuesday, September 15, 2020

What Our Homeschool Looks Like

 I thought it would be fun to share what our days look like in these weeks of virtual school that we're in the midst of.

We are very fortunate to have help every day - my parents come over 3 days/week most weeks, our summer babysitter/cousin Madison comes once a week {she started college this fall so thankfully has the time!}, and Brent's parents also come once a week. I've taken a few vacation days as well. I honestly am not sure how we would get their work done without the help. I think we'd end up with very school heavy nights and weekends. 

Trent's class has a lot of work that he does via a handful of virtual platforms - IXL, Lexia, BrainPop, and ClassKick are the ones I can think of off the top of my head plus some lessons his guide puts directly into their Google classroom. His guide sets clear expectations for what they are supposed to be doing every day, and it's A LOT. They only have 1 Zoom meeting every day, and then Trent has a small group 6th grade meeting twice a week. Their school is doing a lot of pre-recorded assignments and virtual platforms for all the working parents.

Drew's class...not so much. If we weren't going back live, I'd be asking for more work for her because she doesn't have a lot to do each day. My mom got a 2nd grade workbook, and I have her do a lot of lessons in that every day. We might finish the whole book before she starts back to school because I push her hard in it! Drew has 1 community meeting every day and 1 small group 2nd grade meeting once a week. She also works in Lexia every day and does silent reading every day.

Paige has 1 zoom class for 15 minutes each day. There are assignments {using that word loosely} in her Google classroom, but we rarely do them. There's too much going on! My mom did buy her a preschool workbook, but she mainly chooses to color in it, ha. She gets A LOT of reading time from the grandparents throughout the day plus my mom usually works with her on something else. She is really starting to like her class and can sing some of the songs {some in Spanish!} they are singing every day on Zoom.

The big 2 also have a Zoom music class and a Zoom PE class once a week. My mom is also teaching Drew {and I'm working on getting Trent interested} in playing the piano. 

[Side note: I don't have many pictures of Trent below because he has usually been doing his work in his room, but he got caught on YouTube so he's had to start doing it in the kitchen with everyone else ha!]

Sharing her solar system with her class during her community zoom meeting.

She hasn't napped in months but climbed up in my lap one day last week and konked out. My arm was dead, but I didn't care. I needed this reminder that even with the days being as stressful as they are, there are definitely sweet moments I will miss!

Math work with my dad who is a retired math teacher!

Card games are educational, right?
My mom beat Trent twice at Skip-Bo and he was hilarious after he lost.

Babs is reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle to the girls.
{Although in this picture she's looking at text messages!}

My mom taught English for 12 years and elementary PE for close to 25 years.
Their garage is a kid's dream come true with toys and PE equipment.
She brings things all the time - like this parachute - 
and she does a ton of jumping rope with the big 2 also!

We played kickball with our neighbors one Friday for some PE time.

Sharing about her summer

Drew and Barbie learning about grammar.

We did a science experiment that helped explain how stars are formed.

Paige doing her 'school work'.

She is so flexible!

A rain puddle walk with Nana counts as PE time, right?

My view during a conference call!

Using virtual Montessori tools to work on addition - the Stamp Game.

A circle assignment - sorting colors and sizes.
And you can also see some P's they cut out and taped around the house.

Their first days got pushed back {sigh} because the school decided to do a staggered start, so we've got another 10 days for the girls and 14 days for Trent until I HOPE we have some normalcy back in the house. I'm sure I'll miss seeing them so much during the day, but I'm ready to go back to having just 1 job!



2 comments:

Emily said...

This is fascinating to me because I love seeing what various schools are doing in virtual. We have a completely different setup. Zoom is on for 6 hours straight, like in a regular classroom, but with breaks (timers to signal return), waiting room for 1-on-1 time, etc. On one hand, I would much prefer your method, because then Aaron could do things on his own time and we would have the flexibility to get out of the house and GO PLACES (which is what we did all spring). But on the other hand, this 6-hour-zoom current method flows so smoothly because the teacher is guiding the kids through every assignment ("ok, you'll be in the waiting room for 30 minutes and during that time you will work on [x] assignment"), so it requires no parental involvement (which is good for working parents but doesn't matter for people like me of course). Pros and cons to each I guess.

Kathryn Bagley said...

I love that your parents are able to help with teaching as they were both teachers..and who wasn't excited when they saw the bright colored parachute!!!