After four or so months of home-schooling, in addition to the 2020 home-schooling period, it’s back to school! Woo hoo! A big thanks to Cara’s school and teachers for all the efforts during this period! It’s been great to see the lessons as engaging and entertaining as they’ve been. Trying to keep the kids engaged is difficult at the best of times, even more so over MS Teams. Even I get distracted from video call fatigue at work.
Whilst it has been difficult juggling working from home with home-schooling, it has been a great insight into what the kids get up to. Once they go back to school, the house will be a lot quieter. I will definitely miss some of the comments from the kids. One example was during a Maths lesson. The children had to count the number of doors and windows in their house. The teacher, in an attempt to prompt the kids to say the correct answer of ‘window’, provided the clue; “you may have quite a few of these in your walls”. At which point, one child raised his hand and confidently answered; “rats”.
Impacts on Cara…
Based on this recent lockdown, I have found Cara to be very independent and self-sufficient. Where we have asked her to keep busy while we’re on a work call, she’s beavered away with her school work. She also completed a lot of arts and crafts activities, and mastered various obbies on Roblox! Her IT skills also improved, navigating around the laptop to join the various classes on MS Teams. With the exception of one minor breakdown where she couldn’t follow some Maths work in Week 1, there were no emotional outbursts and she was more than happy to chat about what she was up to.
Obviously, without the face to face interaction and playtime during normal school, she has become a bit more homely. We have tried to maintain her socials by having small playdates with her bubble buddy each Saturday, which I believe has helped her mental wellbeing. Her infectious smile is still there! Although they still do PE during the online classes, the lack of running around in the field may have also hampered her fitness levels. However, I am confident these will be back to normal, high levels once she’s back at school. Not sure Cara will be allowed to wear her sheep as school uniform though…
I have been very impressed with the school, and also with Cara’s can-do attitude and trying her best during trying times. We have asked her a few times whether she’ll “miss Mummy and Daddy” once she’s back at school. To which she replies, “No”. So that’s a good sign! Cara has been chomping at the bit to return to finally see all her friends again.
Fingers crossed the impact of the virus continues to reduce. The rollout of the vaccine continues to be of benefit which is positive. In particular, as we approach the Summer holidays!
More info on the roadmap phases
For more details of the roadmap out of lockdown, there’s a summary here on the BBC News site, with the official government advice found here. As always, stay safe!
How was your experience during this lockdown with home-schooling? Do you think your kids were positively or negatively impacted? And are you happy that they’ll be going back? Let us know in the comments below!
