What is going on with our world?! I feel like I’m in a movie. So, today was day one with the kids at home. I was weirdly excited about this last week, but the weekend happened and I was already done!
Monday morning was upon us… We did Joe Wick’s workout live on Youtube. Wow! How unfit am I?! Apparently not as unfit as my 15 year old step son. Although, fair play to him, he completed it and is in a great frame of mind for tomorrow’s class. He’s keen to work on his fitness in this time and who am I to stop him?
Tears and Tantrums!
So, I started the boys off with their first subjects, RE for the eldest and Maths for the youngest. My youngest is quite advanced in his studies, but I’m keen to keep him working to the curriculum where I can. It took all of 10 minutes before he burst into tears. All because I made him watch the videos explaining how to do the Maths. I couldn’t believe it! All this time I have looked forward to the possibility of home schooling him and I failed within the first 15 minutes. Is 10am too early for gin?! I can totally understand why it was called ‘mothers ruin’ now.
Shortly after this, my step son decided that he had had enough of his RE and ‘didn’t see the point in it anyway’. Such a tough one. He pushed back in every way possible. We had the moody “I’m not doing it”, the flailing arms and we had the incoherent mumblings. The morning was LONG, let me tell you!!!
New Skills
After his maths, The youngest attempted to log on to his Purple Maths. No such luck. Too many people in the UK doing the same thing. So, Daddy to the rescue! 45 minutes of coding in Python… BOOM! His favourite time of the day. I loved watching them both do this. They looked so happy and listening to Boo explaining what he was doing was SO rewarding.
Socialising
I tried since the end of last week to get the parents in our year group Facebook group involved in a daily zoom call at lunchtime for the kids to chat together. In fact, I had posted a few ideas of how they could stay in contact, but unfortunately I don’t think Facebook is checked as much these days, so it fell upon deaf ears. It’s all about WhatsApp groups these days. Unfortunately we don’t have one and there doesn’t seem to be much interest in one at the moment, which is a real shame.
I launched the zoom call at 12.30 today and after sitting there for 25 minutes, Boo almost ended the meeting. Thankfully he didn’t and saw 2 of his good friends and it really lifted him. Tomorrow I will do the same, but will message people I know individually to join and see if that makes any difference.
Overall
Day one was definitely more of a 5/10. Many improvements could have been made. It would have been better if I had taken some time out of my work day to go through his work a bit more thoroughly. Tomorrow is a new day and things will be changing constantly! I’m on a new project at work, so I’m going through a lot of learning at the moment. From a work perspective, I’ve felt a lot happier than I have in a long time. I’m working with an awesome team and I’ve felt more connected to my colleagues than ever. Sounds, super strange and I can’t really explain it very well. I think the fact we have to all be on calls and interact more personably, has allowed me to put myself out there more. I’m in a brilliant team and I love how we plan time in our day to have a quick chat and check in on each other. It makes all the difference!
So… That’s it for day one. I’ll be back tomorrow to update you on how tomorrow goes.
PS. Does anyone else’s cats seem massively clingy or weird. I’m not sure mine know what is going on!
