Social Distancing Week Two

Since Fridays are clean-the-house days, I’m generally too tired to post, so I’m switching to Monday. It has been tough writing. Some days I open the screen and think, “What is the point of this?” But other days, I realize how much I love to read, and how I have always loved to read and write. I also see how much my kids need things to read, and so I keep going.

After a few outside nature walks that were just too busy, we have decided not to venture to parks, etc, but to stick with our neighborhood, which hasn’t been too busy. (Anyway, many of the parks and things are closed now! Massachusetts has had a stay-at-home recommendation since last week.) Yesterday, my legs felt like they needed to do something, so I went out for a walk even though it was rainy. No one else was out walking, so I didn’t have to worry about crowds!

Here’s what I posted to instagram:

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Rainy day walk through the neighborhood. The air was clean and crisp. No one else was around as I waded through puddles in my orange paisley rainboots.

A post shared by Amitha (@amithaknight) on Mar 29, 2020 at 12:42pm PDT

Our “homeschooling” schedule started off fairly consistent, but is slowly becoming a little less regular. This is because I am discovering that my natural going-to-bed time seems to be about 1am and my wake time seems to be about 10am, which unfortunately isn’t great for the rest of the family! I may have to give in and wake up earlier and go to bed earlier like I used to, but it’s hard since I’ve been feeling better with this schedule.

#pandemicposts

Social distancing week one

Fun with stuffies!!!

Another journal-type blog post!

It has been one whole week since school closed and homeschooling is going okay. We have a bit of a routine now, which I think is helpful for everyone. The kids mostly seem to be doing okay. The 4th grader has occasionally been moody and tearful (so have I!), and she is missing her friends. Still, they are both currently doing surprisingly well, all things considering. I guess we’ll see how next week goes.

My writing has been slow, mostly because the news has been hard to process, and I worry a lot for people I know who are at high risk due to the virus. Still, at least I have been writing and reading, which is good.

As far as homeschooling, our plan of doing 2 subjects per day has been great so far. We have a schedule, but we don’t stick too closely to it. Occasionally, when the kids are having a lot of fun during recess playing outside or playing with their toys, I just let them play rather than sticking strictly to the schedule. I don’t think I’ll blog much about what we have done specifically (if any friends are interested feel free to email!) because there are so many posts about that these days.

A “map” of our backyard by my 1st grader that we did for social studies (a requested activity!)

On Wednesday, we went on a “field trip” which meant we went out biking on the Minuteman bike trail. The day was beautiful and sunny, and just a little bit cool which was perfect. I was surprised though by just HOW many people were out walking and biking on the narrow trail. The trail also winds past several fields and a playground. There were kids playing sports, piling on top of each other, and there were kids playing on the playground as usual. It was a bit disconcerting–people were acting as if it were a normal weekend day, and not a weekday when people have been asked to stay home and stay safe.

Anyway, today was a chores day, so I’m exhausted from cleaning the house top to bottom (with the kids’ help) and now the kids are doing a piano lesson over FaceTime.

That’s it from me today. Take care!

#pandemicposts #parenting

Social distancing day one

Though I thought I had mostly transitioned away from my blog, with this pandemic, social media has been a bit overwhelming. It seems most useful to me to check in quickly with my friends and then log off. However, I do seem to need to express myself online in some way, so I thought I’d get back to journaling a little bit here. So for as long as I find it fun, I’ll be journaling the pandemic from my POV. As a warning, these posts will be a little off the cuff and only a little bit edited :)

So yesterday was day one at home. My husband is working from home, and I’m attempting to get writing done at the same time, but we have kids to take care of! So the first thing we did with the kids was to make a schedule. My 1st grader needs a more structured day, or she feels anxious. (My 4th grader, by contrast gets annoyed if things are too structured…so we’ll see how it goes.) We googled around for homeschool schedules, looked on FB to see what my friends were doing, and in the end cobbled together something close to what the kids were doing at school (with morning meeting, recess, and snack breaks).

We made a list of subjects the kids were doing at school, and chose two for the first day: Math and social studies. After one day, we were able to see what worked and what didn’t, and we’ll modify accordingly for Monday. (Obviously we’ll be working on reading and writing every day :)) In the end, I only got about an hour of writing in, but it was a productive hour at least!

This weekend, we had already agreed to treat as a weekend, so today, we’re just playing in an unstructured way, like we usually do. While the kids are playing, I’m looking at websites and workbooks and trying to see which things look appropriate for my kids. If any of them turn out to be great I might blog a bit about it. We’re also going to try Dreambox, which is free for 90 days and a colleague of James’s recommended Life of Fred workbooks for math (my kids are good at math so challenging them without boring them will be an issue).

Anyway that’s it from me today. Stay well!

#pandemicposts