Homeschooling Coronavirus UK Lockdown day 11 “The summer term”
Happy belated Easter everyone! Did you all spend it like we did?!?! Getting up when we wanted, going to bed late, drinking too much.. Trying to be healthy and keep a routine and normality, but not really quite achieving it?!?
It did all get super boring over the weekend, at least at times when the sun was shining it felt like “WAHEY, we can do this! LIFE. IS. GOOD.” but then the weather turned crap and we had done everything that could be done — we had even resorted to cleaning. But all we had to look forward to was returning to school today. Which was depressing. But to be fair its getting to feel a bit normal now and at times — dare I even admit it… We quite enjoy it (probably because we are not using morning alarms and living like we are on holiday!) But tomorrow is another day!
So anyway, day 11 of Homeschooling — the summer term begins… And we started all keen yesterday and printed everything out, got the bribes and threats ready and lined up. And then Emily read that it was a teacher training day and went on strike — she spent the day making the boys her personal “bitches” and also perfecting her clown make up.
This photo was taken AFTER Emily washed off the Clown make up — as she didnt realise she had actually used halloween fake blood….. Which is semi permanent, and it is a positive we are on lockdown as she looks currently like a Chernobyl burns victim.
We heard on the radio that it is a good idea to differentiate the days of the week, and make clear breaks between it being the weekend and a weekday.
So, we decided that we would have the children as part of Home economics and not being lazy little twats who have me serve them all the time make themselves lunch. What a great GREAT idea I thought! What can go wrong with 4 slices of bread, a butter knife, some slices of ham and a tub of Utterly Butterly…?!?!? And as a reward for giving me 5 minutes peace, and being so grown up they were allowed to eat lunch on the sofa. Bless them, what a step towards growing up and self sufficiency?
They both left all ingredients on the side, got a chair, climbed up to the cupboard and decanted a 6 pack of Wotsits onto plates for lunch…
But we are classing it as a maths and social skill as they did even share the crisps out without fighting, biting or screaming — TEAM WORK!!
The school have really upped the game this week with more work to do and requests to send photos of the kids doing it (I know I shouldn’t but “balls”, was what I said…). Having both parents working full time at home, homeschooling 3 children, and 2 of the children who are like chemicals — which are completely innocuous and innocent when separate, but when mixed create a small human version of “Mustard Gas” is like hell. Add in the requirement now for 8 hours of begging for the kids to just look at the twatting Phoneme “igh” for just a minute so you can take a fucking photo to email and its a recipe for a mental and physical breakdown.
So we did some online maths with Alex, but I pressed the wrong button and selected the wrong game — and he spent an enthusiastic hour getting 100/100 because he could count to 5….But at least he felt good about himself and a child genius at the end of it, so great for self esteem!!
And then they just started getting on our nerves shouting, so for a laugh we gave them a bit of pipe and a balloon and said the first one to blow the balloon up fully got a Kinder egg….
I like to call this a lesson in “Determination and dealing with failure”. Of course it is completely impossible, and the balloon never got blown up, and I ate the Kinder eggs. The children are having valuable life lessons in suffering and disappointment thanks to this lockdown — and I am SURE one day they will look back and thank me!!
And yes I do know that I am lucky to be on lockdown with my family really, and some people are all alone, and I do feel sorry for them(oh the grass being greener on the other side!!), but writing that sort of sentimental “aren’t I grateful for life” crap every day is neither realistic, sustainable or quite frankly interesting to read.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring…. No lessons planned yet, maybe a walk? Probably a mild hangover? Definitely shouting, screaming and tears (but Derek and I will try and tone it down in front of the kids!). We are so bored that Derek even spent an hour over the weekend locked in the car to see if there were any features that he had missed.
But we have got into Tiktoking and are slowly killing the coolness and thrill that for our pre-teen daughter, so we do have that shared goal!
Stay safe everyone!