by Phyllis McCrossin
It’s 1:45 p.m. Mountain time in California. I am learning, first hand, the joys of homeschooling first-graders.
Our daughter’s twin sons are in the first grade. They attend school online Monday through Wednesday and attend school in class (half-day) Thursday and Friday. The school district’s plan is to switch to five days a week, (half-day) in-class learning after Thanksgiving.
With the Coronavirus on the uptick I’m not certain if that will still happen. The country is waiting for someone to do something definitive rather than play golf and bitch about the election.
Yes. That is a political comment.
Regardless of what the district decides, we are here in California to help our daughter with daycare/homeschooling while she works. It’s tough trying to work from home when one works on commission.
On day one, what I’ve discovered is keeping first-graders engaged and on task (always hated those words when I heard educators use them) is akin to herding cats. “Sit up. Pick up your pencil. No you don’t have to sharpen that pencil again. Don’t hit your brother. Get off the floor. Do you wiggle like that in school?”
There was also some initial shyness when it came to reading in front of Grandma and Poppa, though at night they are always eager to take turns reading. I think when it comes to school it’s a little different.
The daily schedule is self-paced learning in the morning and Zoom classroom in the afternoon. We finished early today and spent some time in Grandma and Poppa’s truck pretending to catch bad guys or look for stray animals. Imaginations take us everywhere.
However, as I’m listening to the Zoom class today, it’s pretty apparent we missed some sort of art class this morning. Guess we will have to try harder tomorrow. We are still learning.
Back in Michigan one of our granddaughters has been exposed to COVID and is in quarantine. It’s scary times for everyone. Please people. Wear your masks. It’s such a simple thing.
Speaking of masks… Yesterday we took the boys to check out a campground closer to their home. We drove their mother’s car, since using her car with the car seats already installed is so much easier than moving them into the truck. We forgot and left our own masks in the truck. King went into a gas station and had to use one of the kids’ masks … the one with dinosaurs on it. He looked really dashing.
The boys were really quick to point out that the mask had to be washed after Poppa used it. Kind of sad that seven-year-olds are so wise in the ways of the spread of a virus.
After driving through the campground we took them to the beach. I came home with bits of shell “treasures” and a lot of sand.
Looks as though we are going to have a busy winter.
