COVID-19 Isolation Leads to Adventures in Home Schooling

Like much of the rest of the world, we have been in isolation the last several weeks because of the novel coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease spreading around the world.  Schools have been cancelled in Maryland since March 16.  Earlier this week, the state announced they will remain closed through at least May 15, but I don't think anyone believes they will reopen this school year.  Tanja has done a great job with the kids planning lessons and other things to keep them focused and learning in our home school environment this last month.

Here are the kids with one of their science experiments making a volcano with a home chemistry set.

For art class one day, the kids learned how to draw various characters from Toy Story.  This Buzz Lightyear picture Derek drew together with Tanja was one of his favorites.

Everyone loves to snuggle with Snoopy.  Lydia was half-asleep watching something on TV one day with Snoopy, who of course was also half-asleep.  I think at this time, the kids had a mild cold (nothing that led us to think of COVID-19).

I celebrated my birthday and came home from work to a clean house and three excited kids bursting at the seams to show me their presents (it was a wonderful birthday).

They had made me lots of cards in their art project time at school with Tanja.  The girls also created word searches, jokes, and mazes in their cards, which were fun to do.

The present we have gotten the most use out of is this game called Pandemic that Tanja found.  The goal of the game is to cure diseases and clear up infections around the world before you run out of moves or other limiting factors.  It has been a hit with the girls as well, and has been useful to teach them about public health crises that we are all living through at the current time.  We also got some use out of it to learn some geography as we researched different cities from the game.

The kids have been using Magformers to learn some geometry.  The Magformers also have been used frequently to build houses, jails, spaceships, and other things for playtime.

Lydia had been wiggling her front tooth for a while and set a goal to lose it quickly.  She was so excited to lose her tooth one afternoon after she kept pulling on it really hard and twisting it as much as she could.  This picture is classic with the bloody mouth and smile of pure joy and excitement.  The tooth fairy made her even more excited when she found money the next morning.  The new adult tooth has been growing out quickly, so she won't ever get to wish for her two front teeth.  The other front baby tooth is almost ready to come out as well.

I have been blessed with a very flexible work environment during this outbreak that allows me to stay home and help out (currently, my schedule has me working in the office three days every two weeks at full pay).  Most of the time when I am home, I am doing Daddy-Derek school (which has a primary goal of keeping him occupied so the girls can learn).  Here we are practicing writing.  Derek wore this same Buzz Lightyear shirt that Tanja had taken in (it was at least two sizes too big for him, but was the only one the store had) for more than a week straight.

For one of their lessons, the girls had to make an advertisement for something that they made up.  Lydia made a poster for her ball made of recycled gum and Karina made one for her gum ball machine.

Derek was just excited to get to use the iPad to color a picture.

Another time, we learned about hoaxes with the Broomstick Challenge, a hoax that recently made its way around the Internet claiming NASA was claiming a unique gravitational pull on a certain day that allowed brooms to stand up on their end.  We learned that it was possible (though semi-challenging) to make brooms stand up on their ends regardless of the day or any supposed unique gravitational pulls.

At one point, we had five brooms standing up at the same time (though we only got pictures of four simultaneous brooms).

We made face masks out of old sheets that have come in use now that we are required to wear them when we go to public places like stores.  The kids helped cut them out and the girls helped Tanja sew them together.

Here's Derek still wearing his Buzz Lightyear shirt and playing with Legos.

I've been very impressed with Tanja's ability to keep the kids on task during school hours.  This home school schedule has helped preserve some sense of normalcy for our kids and they have been far more excited and talkative about their day at school with this arrangement than they usually are when going to school.  We had to cancel our spring vacation plans to the Grand Canyon and other national parks, but the kids kept doing their home school during it, so I think our family is weathering this disruption fairly well.  I'm hopeful that life will return back to normal, but in the meantime, I am glad we have everything we need to keep going in spite of the disruptions.  Others are obviously not as fortunate.