How is everyone doing? School is officially cancelled for the year and I don't know whether to be sad because life is so weird and I am not sure how this 'distance learning' thing is going to go - or to be happy because it would have been hell on wheels trying to shove these kids back into a school routine after being off for a month. Also, we have a high school senior in our house - which is heart wrenching. We have all her graduation party announcements sitting ready to go out - but in all reality, we may not be free to congregate in groups on that date so everything is in limbo. We are still hopeful her school district will create some kind of senior send off with a prom and a graduation of some kind. If not, we are improvising with a hillbilly prom in Aunt Em's barn when it is safe - viruses are not going to keep us down!
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We have tried some fun new things the last few days. We took chalk and went out to graffiti people's cement. Super fun. (PSA: chalk is incredibly hard to find, I couldn't get any online. My husband went to Menards for plumbing supplies for the bathroom and I asked him to check there and he stocked us back up.) We subscribed to Zoom so we can video conference with anyone we can badger into talking to us if we feel cut off. Baby Girl is on my tablet right now with her kindergarten teacher, walking her around our house and showing her our cat - sorry, Mrs. S - you may be seeing way more of my dirty laundry than you wanted to! We have video-ed with our cousins and school friends. We have tried out our two new games - Blokus and Even Steven's Odd. Both fantastic! And both easy enough to play with smaller kids, but still competitive with older people - which is important with our span of ages in this household. As a newly-home-teaching mom, I am very impressed with Todo Math. Both kids have done it now and it is engaging for them and has the repetition and fact skills that I want to see in a math app. Our seven year old's level has word problems, too, which I really like. I highly recommend it - I think I bought it for a year for $40 or something.
Our at-home learning has settled into a groove - just in time for the new 'distance learning' to get organized. I am half ready, half anxious. It feels like I just figured out how this will look at our house and it is getting tossed in upheaval again. If anyone at my kids' schools is listening....PLEASE make this project based and internet accessible....PLEASE don't give me packets of paperwork...please, please, please. I will set up Zoom classrooms for all of you every day if you want to talk to them. I will email you anything they type. Or send you pictures of any project. Please, just no worksheets. I tried this already - and I tried hard. Paperwork at home at this time is just soul crushing, for them and for me. I pinky promise that I am reading with my kids and hitting math facts every day - just don't make me push paper......whine, pathetic sigh, whine. Ok, I am done. I will do what you want - because I am a rule follower. But I may binge eat Milky Ways and drink a lot of whiskey...in the middle of the day. So that is on your head.
Moving on....
Eleven years ago today, we lost my grandpa. He was a great big ray of sunshine in all our lives and we could really use that right now. Every year, on this day, we all go to his beautiful bride's house and drink whiskey with her. She is straight up quarantined in her house right now - she doesn't think that is really necessary, but I think being in your 90's qualifies you as high risk. However, I may go sit in her front lawn with my own bottle of whiskey and toast him from 20 ft away. I am sure he will laugh at us. Love you Gramps.
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