The School Must Go On

My kids have been home from school for two weeks now. Like all the other parents I know, we’re making the best of the situation. The kids are having a ball, actually, and not in the way you might expect; they are creating their own structure and school-day schedule. My father today described it as a Montessori homeschool approach. They have to get down to business by 10:00 each morning, take a break at lunch, stop at 3:00. Within those guidelines, they get to choose which subject to do first, second, third. They are really thriving at it!

Part of it, I think, is because immediately upon finding out that they’d be home for awhile, I made the poster to the left and discussed it with them. (Note: “funtime screen time” has been a topic of ongoing conversation. Since many of the resources their teachers have suggested take place online, and because I gave some “fun” options like all of us watching Jeopardy! during lunch to count as Social Studies, we had to differentiate between screen time for school and screen time for fun.)

Impromptu barre class

Color change experiment

Tin “hedgehog” grown in a tube

They’ve been happily diving into MEL Science experiments from H’s subscription that started at Christmas. P.E. has been a little haphazard. It’s been too cold to take advantage of the outdoors. But so far we’re all surviving and even enjoying this time. Which is good, because Massachusetts just declared that public schools will be closed at least until May 4.