Week 362: Early to bed

As the reality of a year of virtual schooling has set in, we have begun the search that so many other parents have begun: the search for someone to guide our kids through their online curriculum for the year. This has proven to be surprisingly difficult, or perhaps not surprisingly, since everyone else is looking for the same thing at the same time. Still, having been around the block numerous times in terms of looking for in-home child care, I remain optimistic that something will work itself out somehow. Since our district does not yet know when school will start, I feel like we can't be in too much of a rush. Comfortingly, in the email we received today, they also don't know how many hours of content they will be providing per day (range: 1.5 - 6, very useful for planning purposes). They also don't know if the content will be "live" or recorded. Or whether there will be physical materials delivered to people's houses. Or what apps if any they will be supporting. So, there are a lot of unknowns.

We continue to try to at least keep the concept of learning alive for the kids, doing a little bit of something with them every morning. After a huge battle over the literacy app on Friday morning, Lemon and I tried just having him read aloud to me from a book this morning, and that went much better. We learned about several types of concept cars that never entered commercial production. More importantly, no fighting and no sadness. Of course, we still have to keep making progress in the app but I'm hoping mixing things up a little will make it less painful on the days where we do try to do the app. We shall see. 

Meanwhile, Papa Bear continues to work with Lime on learning to read. If he is to be the only kindergartener in the one-room schoolhouse (ie, our living room) with only a bunch of second graders for company, he will need to get up to speed quickly. Fortunately he's a pretty quick study and he does not like to be left behind, so I think actually the challenge of having the bigger kids around will be a good environment for him. And I'd rather him have some other kids around instead of just the virtual interactions with his classmates and teacher. Having had an unusual kindergarten experience myself (in a foreign country where I did not speak the language at the beginning of the school year) I have faith in the adaptability of kids. In another decade, this will just be a good story that he can tell his buddies, about the year he spent at home with the big kids. 

Other than these school related musings, it was another pretty typical quarantine week. The garden continues to be a great source of entertainment, and we mixed things up with a socially distant trip to McDonalds.I ordered a 10-lb box of jelly beans for myself, so that should get me at least through the end of the summer, I'm thinking (jelly beans being a foundational element of both marathon training and sanity maintenance, it's all inter-connected). Hope all of you are keeping well out there, we miss all of you and hope we can be together again soon.