Wiser in the World of Online Learning

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“Oh my gosh, if you don’t stop, I swear I will stab you with this pencil,” I said, lifting a freshly sharpened pencil into view.

Catelyn’s look of defiance changed to shock, and her eyes opened wide.  She looked at the pencil in my hand and took it out.

“You just threatened to stab me!” She said, and started laughing, “With a pencil!”

I smiled and nodded, “I did!  I meant it too!”

And we were off, bent over in belly laughs. We were saved by the grace of finding humor in our homeschooling situation.

These days start with me going through my morning chore routine – make the bed, feed the cat, clean the litter box, start the laundry, start the always full dishwasher, feed the dogs, let the dogs out and NOW – thinking about each child’s lesson plan for the day.

As Gary over at beareavedsingledad pointed out, I am not truly homeschooling.  I am very grateful for that.

Instead, I am following the lesson plan laid out by each one of my kid’s teachers.  They provide the direction, the materials, and the schoolwork and it is my child’s job to be sure the assignments are complete

Monday through Friday I am still sitting with them and making sure they are doing all of their assignments. Not because they are lazy, some are hard to find.  Sometimes, it is hard to understand what the teacher really wants them to do.  Depending on the subject, I am becoming a bit of a nuisance to my children.  Those who hate to read are now reading their material with me.  I am enjoying the story of Anne Frank again and a book about the yellow fever of 1793.

Of course, you do not get an actual book anymore, which drives me nuts.  I have to scroll and scroll through online material to get to the right page.

Some days, I have the kid’s schoolwork already printed out.  Other days we go to class by class and print and print.  In all, I am going through a ton of paper and a ton of printer ink.  I now have folders of schoolwork and a small plastic container accessible filled with art supplies.

The morning is mine.  To run and/or do my gym class, do the chores, do the shopping if I need to, mow the yard, catch up on blogs, pay the bills.  At 10, I start with Declan.  Some days he has Zoom meetings with his class, his speech therapist, or his occupational therapist.  I have their materials printed out before their sessions for Declan.  Declan likes his meetings.  During one, the dogs were barking.  Declan slowly leaned over to me and whispered, “Can you please put the dogs away?  They are ruining my meeting.” 

How could you not smile and acquiesce?

Catelyn gets the 1-3 slot, and Bobby gets the 3-5 time slot.  There are days the work runs over the allotted time frames.  Depending on the flexibility of the teacher, the work gets pushed to the next day.

The two big kids are taking different levels of Spanish, but thankfully both are on the “La Comida” section – the food.  Having taken Spanish through my high school years and 12 credits in college, I can keep up.  Catelyn and Declan are both learning about rocks and the rock cycle.  I like when material overlaps – I sound like I know what I am talking about.  Bobby is on the Pythagorean Theorem in Algebra 2.  Thankfully, math has always been my strength.  I got this.

Through the ups and downs of personality struggles, websites, wifi, and apps, we are finally finding success in online learning. Assignments are being completed ON TIME. Past overdue assignments have been completed.  Some teachers will accept them, and some won’t.  So be it – we’re trying.

I honestly don’t know how we would do this if both Bob and I were working.  Online learning is time-consuming and is taking my full attention.  But thankfully, I have the time to help, and overall, we are finally getting a handle on this.  It took a little bit, but we are finally getting there!

30 thoughts on “Wiser in the World of Online Learning

  1. With all your help, your kids are probably going to be more prepared than their classmates to move ahead. Your family better be planning something special for next Sunday, because you are ROCKIN’ this lockdown!🍎🥰💃🏼

    We still haven’t tackled any of the worksheets they emailed to us for Ben. They could barely get him to do them at school, I’m not going to stress on it. Ben isn’t at a place where he’s ready (or possibly able) to learn more than very basic reading, writing and math. 🤷🏼‍♀️

    Maybe next time with Cate, you can just thump her in the forehead with the eraser end😉😂😂💌

    1. Haha! I laughed out loud at the eraser end thump 🙂 Yep – that sounds like a plan!
      We don’t do too much for Mother’s Day – well, it gets kind of lost. My birthday is the day after this year and sometimes falls on Mother’s Day itself. So they get grouped together. Kind of stinks, but, hey whatever. We’ve been talking about how to celebrate – I’d be happy if there was no fighting and a lot of laughing. Those would be good gifts!

      1. My ex’s birthday is the 10th, so yeah…same thing. He was born on Mother’s Day. I always thought that was sweet since he’s the oldest.

        Yeah, a quiet house, no squabbling, no messes to clean up… to have a nap…oh my, wouldn’t THAT be lovely?!

      2. Hey Robyn,
        I just got an email from Sam. I looked for a contact page to email you but🤷🏼‍♀️ and my email is my full name so I don’t wanna just drop it in your comments.
        If you want, go to my contact and give me an email address for you and I’ll give you the whole info.

        The short version is, he was very sick. Not the C but very sick, he’s home now, recovering.

  2. I love the humour and heart that you are viewing and living this experience with. 🙂 It’s a marvel how you doing this with three kids. And there’s a reason the hubby keeps the pencil and kitchen knives away from me these days. 🙂 Good luck. Hope there’s a light at the end of the tunnel soon!!!

    1. Thank you so much! I laughed that your husband is keeping pencils away from you. At the time it was all I had and it seemed to be a perfect fit 🙂 Although I should probably stick with the eraser end from now on! Thank you! Good luck to you too!

  3. They didn’t send work that Isobelle could do, and for a month it was a nightmare. My daughter was sending 4 emails a day. They said she wouldn’t take her GCSE’s until the fall, where she will be at college, so my daughter is doing basic English, and Math.

  4. You’re a complete star for even persevering, Robyn. I gave that up when I realised the Easter holidays were going to blend into the extended lockdown. No chance of getting Nathan to do much at all now until school re-opens. You’ve done better than me, but I can see how challenging online learning can be, even when it mostly works. 🙂

    1. Thank you, Alli! There are definitely some challenges, but *most* of the teachers have been kind and understanding to our new situation which totally helps. We are all trying to make sense of this new learning world together which totally helps. Hope you are all doing well!! Take care of yourselves!!

      1. Understanding teachers can make a great difference. Keep up the good work, Robyn, and take care of yourselves too. 🙂

    1. It took a little while to figure out, but I think I have finally got a plan. Thank you!

  5. Hello hello! I have nominated you for the Liebster Award. Check out my post tomorrow for your shout out and what the questions are. Rules are apparently:

    – shout out whoever nominated you
    – answer the questions (which you’ll see in my post)
    – do the ’10 things about you’ bit
    – nominate 5-10 bloggers of your choice and let them know

    Thanks for being a great blogger to follow and looking forward to seeing what you write.

    1. Thank you! I am so far behind but hope to get to it soon. Thanks again for the nomination!

      1. Don’t worry. I had a few posts scheduled before I got mine out too and you are under no obligation to do it. I just wanted you to know that I’d nominate your blog because it’s brill.

  6. I’m glad you are getting a handle on online learning for three kids! I asked some teacher friends and parents I know who were struggling if there were some way I could help safely – zoom tutoring or something like that. Both groups said there is too much already and adding someone else to the mix would be less than helpful. It’s been tough on parents and teachers figuring this out, it seems. You are a supermom!

    1. Thank you! Yes, it is tough. I have had a homeschooler offer me help, but I don’t want links or activities that are going to lead me to new material (even if it is supposed to help with a concept we are on). For that reason, we are just trying to get through a mountain of assignments that the teachers have already assigned with the materials they have already provided. And, yes! So many zooms! Declan has the most with his services still in place. It just all takes up a lot of time.

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