A week ago today, my rising anxiety got the better of me. I'd been following the developing coronavirus crisis unfolding over the past couple of months and the words "social distancing", "self isolation" and "lockdown" began creeping into our daily vernacular.
As my blood pressure rose and my stress levels peaked, I made the decision to hunker down at home and take on the challenge of homeschooling. It wasn't something I'd ever contemplated - in fact I always kind of poo-pooed the idea. Homeschooling was something I saw on trashy American reality shows. Something you do if you've got 16 kids and only one Tarago. And why would I omit the vital social interaction with other children that mainstream schooling provides? Nope. No homeschooling for me. No way. Not on my watch.
Then C-19 came along and turned everything on its head. All of my trumped up morals and hoity toity ideals were quashed. As a parent, you are your child's first teacher. I guess I've always had that great responsibility, only now now I'm doing it full time instead of getting a six hour respite five days a week.
I wanted to get ahead of the panic-buying curve, so a couple of weeks before Homeschooling Day 1, I began my mission to stock the house full of educational and play merchandise to get us through what could potentially be the most part of the year.
Armed with more educational aids than I could actually squash in my basket, I exited Big W full of jaunty gusto, ready to take on the challenge. I loaded up on pencils, textas, paints, craft supplies, workbooks, exercise books, sticker books, Easter paraphernalia and colouring books. I pre-ordered a board game based on Australian currency, bought a brand new Children's Monopoly and updated my Dad's old Scrabble. I emptied a plastic tub full of my childhood games and found Yahtzee, Backgammon, Boggle, Connect 4, a deck of cards and Mastermind and I could confidently tick off maths and literacy as part of my new alternate curriculum.
My number one goal is to stick to a daily routine and try to replicate a normal school day, albeit a bit loose on timing. My vision is to follow the classroom schedule by having brain break, recess and lunch and mix up our traditional subject learning with a few extras like French, Auslan and piano. Naturally. Nothing wrong with using the time to over-achieve right?
Well, a week into homeschooling and we have gone completely rogue. We've done Jolly Phonics in our pyjamas, practiced maths by piling Chicken Crimpys into groups, we've played Twister for PE, and for science we've sat and watched cheese melt on toast for lunch. We have a lot of "free play" time. I haven't worn a bra for a week and my boobs can now be tucked into my socks. My hair is so greasy I could probably fry up some fish and chips in it and despite all good intentions, we've made no inroads to becoming fluent in sign language.
But we haven't had too many tears, we've had lots of cuddles on the couch, we've played more board games in a week than we've ever played, we haven't had one "I'm bored" from either of us and with absolutely no resistance, bedtime is still at 7:30pm. So with a renewed sense of achievement, I'm taking that as a win.
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