Day 2, and I have already brought in a substitute teacher! He actually tends to be my new coworker because he finally got the memo that his business does not meet the requirements of being "essential". So today, my husband got to take over the distance learning experience. I was quite relieved because I had an online meeting this morning and knew I needed to be focused on that. I was feeling so good about it all, I made homemade waffles this morning.
I did a quick check in with the husband: use the checklist, have him log in to his Google Classroom, make sure he reads...
Then, I went to work. My day usually starts with responding to a million emails, but today it started with responding to a million emails AND answering a million questions. Oh yeah, I forgot that my husband hasn't been here this past week and has no clue how our new daily routine goes. "Does Cam get milk or juice with breakfast?" "Want me to start the laundry?" "Did you feed the dog?" "What time does Cody wake up?"
I am not going to lie how relieved I was when I needed to sign on to my meeting. It was nice to actually talk to my coworkers and see their faces. We had a pretty long meeting, over an hour. When I was done, I went to check on how school was going today. Well, if playing video games was school work, he got an A for the day! The stinking substitute I hired completely dropped the ball. He was like one of those really cool subs that lets the kids watch movies and pass notes. Super Work-From-Home-Teacher-Mom to the rescue!
I was able to quickly get things back on track. My son LOVES math, so it was very easy to start with that. I knew that would give me the least amount of push back. As he worked on that, I received a delivery of a small cabinet that needed to be put together. Hmmm, the gears started turning... time for a little technology education. I handed him the instructions and some tools and had him get to work. Not only did this save me the complete stress of putting that thing together, it gave him a really neat, real-life experience. At some point in his life, he will have to assemble some piece of furniture, or follow horribly written directions. I am only on Day 2, but I am getting a better feeling for this every day. I can turn almost anything into an educational lesson, and you can too. If you are at home and the laundry is piling up, there is no reason you can't teach your kids how to do it. Cody has always had chores, but they were pretty simple. I have stepped it up a notch lately. So instead of putting his plate from lunch into the dishwasher, he now has to make his own lunch.
Another thing I had him start today was a journal. There is a good chance something like thing won't happen again in his lifetime, so maybe he should be documenting it. Actually, I selfishly want to see it from his perspective. As an adult, I kind of like to be a hermit in my house as I sit in pajamas all day, but I can't imagine how different this is for him. He was used to seeing his friends EVERY day. One if his best friends lives directly across the street and they are now forced to video chat. It must be such a different experience for kids of various ages.
My Camden hasn't said much about this, I think he thought it was just a really long weekend. But today, it hit him. He started asking about school, and asked when we were leaving to go there. He asked about his friends. His school sent us a video of one of their staff singing a song to the kids where she mentioned all of them by name. I was in tears as I watched it with him. How do you explain to a 2 year old why he can't see his friends? After I dealt with the fact that I am an emotional basket case, I pulled it back in and tried to focus on the positive. Distance learning with him has been much easier than with Cody. We read A LOT of books, watch a lot of videos of people reading books, and then play a lot of pretend. I stumbled across a bag of Lego figurines last night, about 300 of them. These have been the solid source of discovery and play today. The substitute really came in handy helping in the preschool classroom, maybe I'll keep him around to help in there.
As I finish typing this, Cody has finished his reading, continued working on his sketch from yesterday, and completed my lovely new cabinet. I am not a teacher, but I am raising one pretty awesome kid! And that my friends gives me all the reassurance I need.