Coronavirus UK Lockdown Homeschooling day 6
Here we are, day 6, week 2, off we go… I am sure like me, seeing the end of last week, and reaching Friday was a relief, and it felt like you had fought and won a battle — its amazing how those 5 days dragged and all the emotions that were crammed in. And like me you took a deep breath yesterday evening at the thought of another week starting.
The weekend was actually surprisingly quite enjoyable, it did have a different vibe than the weekdays. We did some chilling out, trying to not live in our own filth (reserving that for weekdays!), and got fully dressed and made up — complete with gold eye shadow to go to the supermarket and just to drink strongbow and cook a roast dinner on Sunday.
Although all of the plans to actually tidy the house have gone out of the window, in one of our more positive moments we did excitedly say “Oooooh we can get all the jobs done that we never have time! Like sort out the wardrobes, clean the cupboards, organise our photos, such a positive!” but we have done absolutely fuck all, as that would eat into our eating, drinking and wandering around aimlessly time. Although Derek did actually spend 5 hours building lego on Sunday — he even let Seb play for an hour!
So this morning, and it was 10am when we all woke up so that does technically count as morning… We had a bit of a tense start, I have been giving the children immune defence vitamins, and thought I had more in the cupboard. I did not. And was on the last 1 vitamin. So it was time to pick the favourite child — and the other had a jelly tot placebo.
We firstly had a nature lesson and watered the pots of mud, we couldn’t actually find any seeds in the shops — but haven’t told the children. I really do think they need hope, anticipation and a nature project so we are going to go with it as character building. I am hoping that once the lockdown is finished I can transplant in the night a full grown plant and amaze the children!
Seb had maths on the agenda, and some tally chart pictogram style thingy, so after giving some thought of what we could use to graph in the absence of being able to speak to actual people we decided to log the weekends alcohol bin! It was a surprise to everyone that White Wine had won!
We then had a Coronavirus simulation using playmobile, showing the lockdown and trying to demonstrate keeping the house safe, and when going out keeping a distance. It all got a bit mad max and out of hand with a ram raid on the castle for loo roll and someone with coronavirus locked in a cage and beaten by a troll. #lifeskills
The days are getting shorter, as we wake up when we wake up, we finish when we want to finish, and we try and go with the flow in the middle — doing at least something of some educational value as and when the children (or us) feel like it. If this wasn’t lockdown we could probably market ourselves as a really poncey expensive Montessori school and do extremely well out of it!!
We have started to chill out and stop beating ourselves up over the shit we have not done, there is not much we can do, but what we can do is make it as less crap as possible, and if that means watching netflix, playing on tablets, drinking at 4pm — then so what!?!? You only live a coronavirus lock down once, make it enjoyable!! Treat it like a little holiday from life as it is all out of our control, apart from how we handle it within the 4 walls you are in.
Even famous people have started to get sick now, I do wonder if they are also on house party and are also feeling at times violated when a call comes through and they are all greasy and in a skanky bathrobe and the house is a tip.
In some ways we are more accessible than ever at the moment. Before the lockdown you would organise to meet people at set times and set places, and now everyone and anyone can dial into your house and life spontaneously at anytime, and work calls are video calls — so you have to spend ages thinking of where to leave the skype laptop to hide the filth, or at least have a metre square piece of tidy house somewhere. Far too much to think about.
Everyone is going a bit crazy at the moment in emotion, action, thought — sanity is being tested in all areas, I actually spent far too long today pondering why you never had a sausage salad, but you would have a ham salad, but to add a Cumberland into a Salad would be really bizarre.
And I need to check in with my parents more often, my father spent the weekend designing and making his own guillotine. I am not even joking. He sent a photo and I fear for the Gnome and also for my Mother.
Although it is quite an impressive bit of workmanship really!
Stay safe everyone! (Especially you Mum…..)