No menu, just malarky.

 Hey folks!

I'd have made a menu yesterday and posted it today but ... well, the kids happened. They've been extra silly over the last several days and I'm having a hard time keeping up with it. Blanket fort shenanigans, jump scares around corners, making monster noises at each other, and the occasional bickering has my head spinning. I thought that this kinda stuff was stuff they grew out of. Apparently if they get sufficiently bored, my boys will start up with this. I must admit, it was funny to see Cuddle Bear in the blanket fort with most of his body sticking out because he didn't fit. I snapped a picture of it and sent it to Beloved. He cracked up.

When they started to get bored with surprising each other by randomly poking their hands out, Cuddle Bear grabbed his big bag of clean blankets to make his own blanket fort in his bed. If only I could get them to pick up the laundry. Maybe later, after they get some of this goofiness out of their system.

I don't have a menu, but summer feels like it's turning into a Nine Inch Nails song: Everyday is the Same. I've been tutoring Cuddle Bear in Algebra for the last several weeks. We've hit a point where my scrambled brain is trying to do calculus and linear algebra on his work. It made today very frustrating for both of us. Add into this mix the fact that his new scientific calculator is not operating on the decimal system, it's been rather vexing. We tried to find the instruction booklet but it is missing in action. We'll probably find it in September.

Snuggle Bug is doing pretty well with summer school. I don't know if his class is going to be making something for the "Anything that Floats" regatta happening at the end of the month. Last year they won Family Favorite. We've talked about going to it again. Both boys are hoping to see their friends at it. And, to be honest, I hope they get to. They've been a bit miserable and grumpy because they haven't seen any of their friends since the end of school. Snuggle Bug has made a few new friends but mostly he is pretty lonely even at school.

Some ramblings about life and potholes.

 Hey y'all. 

My street got 'fixed' by the WSA (Water and Sewer Authority) and has so many potholes that I feel like I'm playing Frogger when I'm driving and trying to avoid them. The last time they fixed something, stuff broke and we didn't have water for the day. I'm pretty sure these guys are a menace to society, not because they're bad people but because they put gravel into potholes instead of actually repairing them. I'm half tempted to get some driveway sealant from the hardware store up the road and fill in the gap around the pothole and the sewer lid.

Now, this fuckery is not entirely the WSA's fault. The highway department paved over all the manholes two years ago and screwed up the road so that it has issues on top of issues. And yet, for all of this work, the railroad tracks are a nightmare. The tracks are ok, but the crossing is just about nothing but gravel and two car eating potholes. The railroad is working on that this week. Here's hoping they're better than WSA or the highway department.

I have seen people loose mufflers off of their cars because of these potholes at the tracks. Fools and people who are not from around here will go over those tracks at full speed and damage their vehicle. It's been a hazard for a while and I'm glad it is getting worked on, I just hope that it improves the drivability of the street. Our speed limit is 35 mph but sometimes you have to go 15 because the road is just that bad. Oh, one more detail I forgot to mention. This part is sheer stupidity and someone is probably going to get hurt because of it. There's a small rise and at the top of the rise it says lane closed. You pop over it and the eastbound lane is closed for the space of about a car length. But it's a double solid and a blind rise. Murder on the eyes in the morning and you hope that nobody's derping in the road on that rise because of the sun burning your corneas to a crisp. Yeah, that's been interesting. Nothing like playing chicken because the WSA couldn't fix something properly.

I've been struggling to stay on top of everything, but I am slowing getting back into my groove. Tutoring Cuddle Bear has been eye opening. This young man is going into be a high school junior this fall. He's bright, he's charming (when he feels like it), and is really focused on learning as much as he can. Things we already know. It was realizing that through middle school they short changed him on mathematics. He and I have been working through a Spectrum Math workbook focused on algebra. We finished the pre-algebra chapter this week and it became clear that they were having him working on elementary school material, not grade appropriate work.

I understand a special education classroom is a juggling act when you have students at multiple grade levels in there and it gets even more difficult when you are dealing with  learning disorders and stuff like people who need communication aids. I did this work before I had kids. It's hard and at the end of the day you are exhausted. It doesn't change the fact that you have to meet the kids at their level. My boys are smart enough to pick up algebra and geometry. How do I know that? By how they whip through some damn complicated concepts (who here remembers the identity property of zero?). 

Now I am investigating things like how was he taught English, what Science classes did he get skipped over on, what are they refusing to teach my sons because they have autism. I'm mad as hell. In his IEP reports, his teachers were saying that he was struggling with algebra because he came into the class unprepared for it. He should have been prepared. That's why we're working on it now. Because I think he's going to get shuffled into a remedial geometry class or some similar grand bullshit.

He wasn't given a choice last year about going into BOCES exploration program. And it wasn't a thing that his entire class had to do. They were trying to pidgeon hole him into a shop class, because it was easier for them to throw him at the BOCES environment than to take the damn time to educate him. Cuddle Bear hated BOCES because it was a chaotic learning environment and he had no interest in what they were teaching him. We're watching the school like a hawk to see if they're going to try to put him back into BOCES or if they're going to honor what he said in the IEP meeting.

Right now, I know that one son is approximately 4 grades behind in mathematics and possibly in other subjects as well. I have suspicions that the other son is in a similar boat. As I get this figured out, I'm trying to decide what action to take. I can't do the chain flail thing, they're unreliable as hell. But a proverbial baseball bat of information dropped on the desk of the department chair and a demand for an explanation may start moving things in the right direction.

I'm sick of people telling me what a good mom I am. I'm a fucking educator by way of my education. I get that everyone has a different learning style and I adapt my teaching styles to be responsive to them. This is not a mere 'mom' thing. I'm dragging out material from college to teach them informally about the history of the country, math skills, and language arts. Language arts is challenging because they have difficulty with inferencing. I think, however, as we work in the mathematics area, they will find that they can apply some of the skills for breaking down problems into workable bits useful for interpreting inferred content.

I'm mad. I shouldn't be doing the school's job for them. I  have my good days and I can focus to get them through their work. I have my bad days where I struggle to figure out words. All of this is weaponized bullshit of the highest order. When my kids say they want to be home schooled instead of dealing with the uncertainty of what the next school year brings, I get angry. They shouldn't be anxious that they're going to get screwed academically because of their autism.

Building planners for the boys for school

 The kids are starting to think about when the school year begins. So have I. As the modified bullet journal system has been working really well to help me manage my executive dysfunction due to my disability, I thought that it would help the kids. I let them decorate the covers with all the stickers they wanted. Snuggle Bug went with almost a full page of Transformers stickers.

I set it up so that the 'calendar' has their week at a glance. The first day of the first week is highlighted because it is a day off from school. It's part of the same way that I code days off from school on the wall calendar and in my own planner. I used the bullet journal notation for an event 'O' to mark that it was Labor day. The second day of the week also has that 'O' mark with a note stating it is the first day of school.

On the extreme right hand side of the daily section, I note the calendar date and the letter for the school day. I've decided that I'm going to do something a little fun for the kids and put stickers in on the days they have off. I included at the beginning of each binder a copy of the bullet journal key.  On the first page of each section, I put a short note on a brightly colored post-it sticky note explaining how to use the section.  This is partly for the kids to use and partly to inform the teachers how it's set up.

And, if we go back to distance learning because of Covid-19, I've got that beginning of structure in place that meshes with what I've got going on so I can do a better job of supporting them and their academic needs.

There is one section that is not assigned yet. But this gives the teachers flexibility to assign something to that section. It it my hope that this will work better than the last planners that the school gave out which were much smaller and poorly organized. We're going to practice using the bullet journal system with notecards over the next few weeks where they have their tasks for the day written down and they mark them off according to the system. I bought some extra large notecards to make this a little easier.

I am exhausted. And horrified.

 I feel like I didn't sleep at all last night. I just feel exhausted and I have no idea why. My brain was insisting it was Saturday when I woke up to take my morning medication. So, with out much in the way of qualms, I laid down on the couch and fell back asleep. I woke up again as the kids were demanding food telling me it was 8:30 am and Beloved was getting ready for work. I was confused and then remembered it was Friday.

My back is feeling somewhat better than it was yesterday, which is an improvement over how I was feeling on Sunday. I have a pretty arrangement of bruises in the middle of my back and scattered about the rest from all the random crap I landed on. I think I figured out what was in the middle of the rug where I hit. A plastic dinosaur. With spikes on it. I resisted the temptation to throw it the hell away after I found it. I handed it to the resident dinosaur fan (Snuggle Bug) and told him to put it away in a tone that came out a bit harsher than I intended. He was about to ask why and pile it up with the Transformers that he was playing with and changed his mind when he saw the look on my face. I apparently looked angry. I was, with the stupid dinosaur and the whole situation. 

Yesterday was a day of near misses. I kept tripping over my own feet and barely missing falling over stuff. I could say that I kept having near misses with flashbacks too. I kept feeling myself beginning to fade out of the situation and then I would ground myself, partly by making a point to sit in a hard backed chair so that I would feel the sting of the bruise on my back. Not the healthiest method of grounding, I will confess, but it was effective. The bruising across my back was part of the reason why I kept almost having flashbacks because it's pretty much all in the region where mom broke a dozen wooden spoons about my head and shoulders when I was around Snuggle Bug's age. (Speaking of Snuggle Bug's age, when the hell did my baby turn into a pre-teen? Oh, yeah, he turned 11 last week. I'm doomed.)

I kept having near misses with panic attacks regarding the kids going back to school. I know it is the beginning of August and they're still getting everything sorted out. The pictures that came out of the school down in Georgia scared the shit out of me. The school's reaction to the students who shared the pictures made me angry. We're in the middle of a pandemic and these kids have no social distancing measures in place for hallway passing. The number wearing masks I could count on one hand out of at least a group of thirty or so in that picture. At least one school in Florida is shut down because of COVID19 after opening for less than a week. 

We're in the process of trying to source masks for the kids to wear to school. We're discussing decontamination procedure for when they get home from school. We are quietly struggling with enormous anxiety over how the school is going to handle social distancing on the buses because they're not designed to keep kids 6 ft. apart. Rumor has it that they're going to have students sit together by family. That's ok if you have a small family like we do, but what about the families in the district that have single children or more than three kids. (One family my friend knows has seven kids. Gods only know how they're keeping up with all of them. That must take a ton of organization and coffee. I'm struggling with two.)

The school is giving us the option of staying home and doing distance learning for the semester but we've discussed it. I simply can't handle it. I'm getting frayed at the edges. It's effecting my mental health in bad ways. As much as we don't want to do it because of the fact that I am in the high risk pool if I catch this thing, we are sending the kids to school for face to face learning. There's the negative effect hitting me on the psychological front that is pushing us towards this decision. There's the fact that I simply can't provide the two very different levels and styles of educational support that both kids need, that they will get from face to face instruction. And there is the fact that the kids need the socialization with their peers for more than an hour. It's more than "they need to be with their friends" both kids have some socialization cues that they're missing and they can only learn them from experience. We've tried teaching them, but we can only do so much. They need to go back to school for their counseling to help them develop the skills to handle social situations and learn appropriate ways to socialize. They need to go back to school to get the occupational therapy that we can't provide.

There's a whole list of reasons why my boys need to go back to school and it's longer than my list of reasons why I need them to go back to school. I am afraid that this is going to get one of us sick. Not because we're not following safety precautions but because I have watched my neighbors become increasingly lax about following personal safety precautions. I'm thankful that Snuggle Bug seems to have grown out of his asthma problem. At the same time, it can put him in the same risk pool as me. It's scary. I'd make our own cloth masks but I can't get the tension fixed on my sewing machine and, honestly, I'm not as good at using a sewing machine as I am with hand sewing. And the prospect of hand sewing bias tape is hell.

I'm horrified by the way people are pushing so hard to put some of our most vulnerable population at risk for this disease based upon the false assumption that it doesn't effect kids as dangerously as it does adults. I've been following the data since April. It is as lethal to children as it is to adults. Especially if they have a preexisting condition. I get angry when someone says "It's not as bad as polio." The numbers say that it is exactly as bad as polio except that 1/3 number is dead instead of paralyzed. And I'm worried about flu season because there is a variant of the swine flu brewing in Asia that has the potential to be as bad as the Spanish Flu pandemic. Which is thus named because Spain was a neutral party during WWI and only place reporting on it, not because it originated there. It started out in an army base in Kansas. But no body mentions that bit of history.

I don't want Florida's weather, please send it back home.

It is going to be a short post because it is the end of the day. It has been hot and humid. Surprisingly, my plants outside are doing ok. The Japanese beetles have slowed down their destruction of my rose bushes out front. They have yet to discover the one on the back deck. I am not completely sure what's brought about this change. Perhaps my flicking them off the bushes in the morning has been helping, I don't know.

I have been sorely tempted to take the boys over to the park so that we might spend some time in the water cooling off. The problem is, pretty much everybody and their brother has that idea, and there's still a pandemic going on. So, today I let them take extra long showers. They seemed to be refreshed after that. If nothing else, they were clean and smelled good. (Cuddle Bear is beginning to have a distinct scent to himself now as puberty is sinking its claws into him. I had wished we had a little more time before we had to work on stuff like finding deodorant that agrees with his skin and such. I was wrong.)

Summer session is challenging. Cuddle Bear is in Extended School Year program and visits the school four days a week for an hour and a half. They're practicing social distancing by having two students per classroom and the staff all have masks. He is being transported to school in a car with the driver wearing a mask and the car is cleaned up between students (each student being transported alone). They're not requiring masks for the students at this time. Beloved and I are talking about getting the boys a set of masks for when the school year begins and they are out in public more. Right now, we're home 99% of the time.

The big challenge with summer session is Snuggle Bug. He is in the Summer Skills program. They are doing that via distance learning. It's a little easier because I'm not rapidly switching between two different grade levels to do academic support for. At the same time, Snuggle Bug is attempting really hard to have fun instead of learn. He makes silly faces at the camera randomly. He throws out random jokes or starts making duck noises to make people laugh. He's a real character and trying to rein that in has been really hard. But, when he does get to work, his work is an unexpected approach. Their current project is planning how to run an imaginary ice cream truck. The teacher asked for songs the truck would play, he was first in the list with a suggestion: AC/DC's Shoot to Thrill. 

It's been an adventure to say the least.

Dreading this week.

I have an IEP meeting Monday morning. I looked over the draft IEP and feel like I'm reading gibberish. I try but I don' really understand the test scores. I can't tell if they're "good" or "bad" numbers. I can't gauge where my son is at academically and this leaves me unsure how to advocate for him. What is particularly frustrating is the fact that within the parameters of his IEP he is performing at honor roll levels. It leaves me wondering if his IEP is keeping him back from success in a more mainstream classroom setting.

And yet, I see the difficulty he has with the mainstream classes that he has and the amount of one-on-one support he has needed, and I realize that the IEP is part of the reason why he is having the success that he is. It's just all very confusing and anxiety provoking because I worry about how he is going to perform without the supports that he has right now. I worry about how he's going to do in life after high school.

Do I take some time during this mess with COVID-19 and the distance learning to teach him how to balance a checkbook? Do I spend some time trying to teach him more about how to cook? I don't know. It's hard because it is so exhausting to get through the distance learning work. Cuddle Bear does ok on his own and is pretty much on top of his class work. Snuggle Bug, on the other hand, needs a lot of assistance unless he is playing math games.

As it stands, the boys get through most of their work for the day by around lunch time. I'm then left with the question of how to keep them occupied so they're not fighting and driving me insane for the rest of the day. We've been adhering to the social distancing protocol and spending a lot of time indoors. Part of that is because the weather recently has been bonkers. Last weekend, we were coming off of a week where it was cold enough to snow at random. This weekend, we're heading into a week where there's supposed to be a fair amount of rain.

We can't go to the park because I can't just wipe down all of the playground equipment and let them run around. We don't really take walks because we don't have enough masks for everyone to wear one as we take a stroll. So, when the weather's nice, the kids stay in the yard and ride their bikes in laps around it. But, not for too long because I don't want them to run up to every neighbor who is out walking their dog and ask to pet the cute pupper. I've noticed people relaxing their protocol measures as our county is going into phase one of opening up. This is deeply concerning for me, because COVID-19 hasn't gone away.

I'm not sure how many of my neighbors will be going back to work. I'm not sure how many will still be home and wandering the neighborhood. I know that we need to get out of the house some. I just don't know how to manage that and my work in the house at the same time. Snuggle Bug's safety awareness has taken a nose dive. We've taken to locking up the cabinet where we keep the cleaning supplies and controlling his access to things like scissors because he's done things like tried to clean the bathroom unsupervised and cut his own hair. It's vexing because I thought he had grown past this. It's even extended to outdoor play. We were just supervising the kids from the front window of the apartment as they played in the front yard. But, Snuggle Bug somehow has found busted glass and metal which he started using to build with. Fortunately, his big brother tried to stop him and when he was unsuccessful, he got me. But, because of Snuggle Bug's reduced safety awareness (which we suspect is due to the lack of structure from not being in the pretty rigid format of the school day), he needs more supervision when he's playing outside.

I feel like we've taken several steps backwards for each step forward we have made. I talked with his teachers and it was both a relief and a disappointment to notice that Snuggle Bug was struggling with the reduced safety awareness and impulsivity at school during the day as well. I'm waiting on a call back from the autism center with any suggestions for how to manage this. We've locked up things that can be locked and haven't let him out of our sight. I'm not looking forward to trying to juggle the level of direction that Snuggle Bug needs versus the level of direction that Cuddle Bear needs versus my responsibilities and needs.

It is exhausting. I am trying very hard to keep them engaged and entertained. But I am running out of ideas and spoons. Throw in the effects of stress and the weird weather, I've been having high blood sugar related exhaustion and headaches. It's just been miserable. And it looks like the weather this week is going to be another weird weather week so I can pretty much plan on having at least one migraine. I have other things on my mind as well, but that'll be a separate post.

Trying to partner with the teachers is challenging.

I honestly thought that because of the easy access to internet and such, partnering with the teachers would be easier. Instead, I am finding it exhausting and challenging. Not because the teachers are not helpful. But because I am mentally tapped out by the end of the week, which is when I sit down to plan my next week and attempt to align my schedule with the kids academic needs.

So, when I get that weekly call from the teachers, I find myself at a complete loss for words to say "This is what I'd like to do, how does it work for you?" They want to help. They are happy that we're doing what we can and that I am as militant about having the kids do school work as I have been. At the same time, I am getting exhausted from all of this. I don't know how the home schooling parents do this.

I realize that if I let the kids just derp around on the laptops for the afternoon, they will be a bit whiny and cranky when I get them off of them. At the same time, it is hard to get my things done when they are loudly arguing, digging through legos (which is the worst sound ever), or generally being loud in doing stuff. If I don't keep them busy, they fight. I can only do so much with the 20 minutes worth of work in each subject for each day. I still have the majority of the day to keep them active and I am running out of ideas.

I wish I didn't have limited spoons. There was a time I could have handled this better.

Five days? Wow.

I could have sworn I posted something here on Friday. I apparently was wrong. It's been busy here. I have to basically sit and supervise the kids on the laptops to make sure that they do their work. I also have to try to help them navigate the system. Fortunately, one of the teachers called today and did just that for Cuddle Bear. Between them, they got all of the assignments for last week caught up and a start on this week's work in social studies.

Snuggle Bug keeps wanting to play games on the laptop. I have to keep poking my head in the other room to make sure that he's actually doing work. Or I have to just sit there and watch him work. He can navigate the software that they're using pretty well. I, on the other hand, am like a fish out of water when it comes to using it. It is still better than Blackboard was when I was taking online classes. And from what I hear, Blackboard is still awful and easy to hack. You'd figure they'd improve that thing at some point between the 90s and now. It's only been about thirty years.

We spent the weekend busy. Saturday was a big cleaning day. Sunday was a day to check on Beloved's folks and make sure they're doing well with everything going on. They've been bored to tears because their social life has been ripped away. Our Sunday visits have been greatly appreciated. It is helpful because it gives the kids a big yard to run around in safely. We're well away from everybody else because they live even farther in the boonies than we do.

I've started two shawls. One is a version of the crochet Wingspan shawl. I'm doing seven triangles/wings on it in each color of the rainbow. I started with red. I'm now on orange and I feel like I'll be crocheting in orange for FOREVER. This is one of the smaller wings. I think I may have made a poor decision in using a hook and yarn about two sizes larger than what the pattern called for. It'll look stunning when it's done, however. The other shawl is a basic half granny square done in size 10 crochet cotton with a size D hook. This will probably make me go half blind by the time I'm done.

And I'm still working on the big needlepoint project. As I get things to where they're beginning to look like they should, I'll post pictures.

Skipping Art Day for the Kids.

Because my day is completely out of order, we're skipping art projects today. I am going to attempt to make some art today. I also am going to attempt to do some writing. It's just been hard to find the time because I've been so busy monitoring what the kids are working on and doing with those laptops. We did some of our usual routine and I think that is the only reason why the day did not turn into complete chaos. My massive headache in the morning made me extra grouchy and I think I didn't sleep well last night.

Right now, the kids are screwing around on the chromebooks from school while I am waiting for calls on Keen. They were playing math games. When I walked out of the room, they switched to doing other stuff. I caught them at it and then got them started watching science videos. I am going to have to watch them like a hawk to make sure that they don't mess around too much. At least I am not responsible for lesson planning every day. I can just act as a support teacher instead of the main teacher now for most things.

I'm still going to continue to do my best to introduce new things like how to bake bread and sewing on a button. A little bit of home economics is not a bad thing. They're sort of staying on top of their chores. It's been tricky to get them to do so. Since they're home all the time, they feel like they can just put off work until later. Not that I know anything about that feeling.

Science videos and stuff.

For the last week we have been watching Bill Nye the Science Guy on repeat. I've lost count the number of times we have watched the volcanoes episode. When they're not watching Bill Nye, they are watching videos of kittens (including kittens being born). This has lead to questions about babies and such. The questions are getting a bit awkward at times. Fortunately, I'm not the only one who is being asked these kinds of questions. Beloved gets to answer them too.

We are adjusting to the new schedule to fit the teacher's schedules. Fortunately, it's not a big adjustment. The only problem here is the fact that one of the chromebooks is refusing to load properly. I don't know if I did something not quite right or if it's being glitchy. If I could figure it out on my own, I'd be happy to get it sorted out. I called the school and someone has put in a tech support request for me. They said it may be a few days before they have it sorted out because they are now on a M-W-F schedule rather than the every day schedule.

I am willing to wait and keep doing the things that I am doing over here. The fact that they've done so much for us that we hadn't expected is awesome. I think the kids will be happier with more access to their teachers and their classmates.

The fact that we are stuck at home is alleviated by the fact that we have so much technology. Sure, it's not the latest stuff, but we've got videos for them to watch and music to listen to. We have a small library of books (and some books on loan from the school as well). We are fortunate to have this. I keep asking what I can do to give back to the community to express my appreciation and support.

Tech has landed and other good news.

Friday morning, when the school dropped off their care package of lunches and breakfasts for the boys, they also dropped off the chromebooks assigned to them. Beloved got everything set up for them to get on to our network. Next thing I know, after we did the initial let's log in and make sure you can get into your digital classrooms the boys decided they wanted to do math for fifteen minutes on the programs on the computers. I was astounded but, nevertheless, impressed with how well they settled into using them and how apt they were with the programs.

Their typing skills are very hunt-and-peck but I might be able to teach them a more effective method of touch typing. Billy still wants to write a book. He has expressed interest in making a comic book about "Billy the Mighty Mighty Massive Robot." I have enough art supplies kicking around, I think we may be able to make that happen between class work.

Their teachers are giving approximately the same amount of work over the week that I had been putting together. We're going to keep more or less the same schedule and structure that we have been using for the last few weeks. Instead of doing math problems out of a notebook, they've got the math programs on the computer. And instead of writing short two paragraph essays on random topics, they're getting work assigned to them from their teachers. I'm just going to act as support for them in that process. We're still going to do some social studies videos, but they're going to be along the topics that the teachers are working on them with. If I understood what the teachers have planned, they have videos that the kids can watch in the google classrooms that are set up.

Google classroom is a lot more user friendly than Blackboard ever was. I'm glad they decided to go with this platform. It's got a better interface. There's only one thing that's not working properly and I emailed the teacher about the bug. I think we can get it fixed by early next week if everything goes according to plan.

The kids have had their adhd medication tweaked and today was their first day after adjustments have been made. And it made a big difference in the positive direction. I think that we're going to have a much better week and a less stressful week this week than we did last week because of the medication adjustment and the additional support from the school. Last week was rough. I ran out of ideas about Tuesday. The math problems I wrote and that Beloved had written were solved in less than 5 minutes. (That's kids 2: parents 0, if you're keeping score.) In a desperate effort to keep them interested in something, we watched a lot of Bill Nye the Science Guy (Bless him and his enthusiastic approach towards everything. The kids were laughing and learning.) and the history of steam engines about a dozen times.

I started out with the idea of introducing them to the industrial revolution. Then steam engines came up and they hyperfocused on that. I sort of was able to tie the steam powered loom to early computing, the kids were impressed with that for about 5 minutes. There was a lot of bickering because the weather wasn't great so they couldn't go outside and play. But the weather this week promises to be decent. And I think I'm going to find them more interested in using their laptops to do school work than bickering. They were pleased to show off their work as they were using the various programs.

Communication breakdown is more than an Led Zepplin song.

In the light of the situation, I am honestly not surprised by the communication breakdowns happening. The school is scrambling to set up a google classroom account for all of the teachers and striving to connect them with the kids. This has been made even more challenging by the fact that not everyone in the community has computer access and internet access. It's been an interesting week.

According to theory, we may be getting the chromebooks assigned to the boys tomorrow but it is looking more like it is going to happen next week. On one hand I am relieved because I am not going to have to come up with lesson plans. I am terrible at it. On the other hand, I am concerned that we are going to fall behind if we don't have the chromebooks tomorrow.

I'm going to do my best not to worry. The school has their hands full and they're juggling a lot of balls all whilst spinning plates on a unicycle. I feel like I should do something to help, but there isn't much I can do. I just keep having the kids stick to the schedule that I have set up for them and try to figure out a way to keep in contact with the teachers. Email and phone calls have been flying around a lot. They keep telling me thank you for doing what I have been with the kids.

I just wish I knew a little better what they've been working on, this way I can push more of that into what we're doing at home. Because I am running out of ideas.

Saturdays are for relaxing, right? Ha!

The kids are taking a break from cleaning their room. My kitchen looks like a bomb blast. And it's laundry day. So, relaxing is not exactly an option. I'm trying to get caught up on a bunch of stuff for myself that didn't happen during the week because of home-schooling. I honestly don't know how those mommy bloggers manage home-schooling, a business, and a thriving blog all at the same time. I'm barely keeping up.

On the good news front, the kids are doing well with their mathematics work. Billy's got the basics of fractions down pat. This up coming week I am going to give him more challenging fraction mathematics problems to see how he does with them. Doug did his first algebra problems and needed only a small amount of guidance on how to do them. I'm giving him a few more to do next week. I am also giving him a page of fraction mathematics to see where he is at with that. It's more complex than what I gave Billy but I have no problems walking Doug through how to solve problems. Worst case scenario, we bust out a calculator to solve problems.

They did really well with the social studies work I gave them. Billy's opinion 'mini-essay' on Ecuador came out well. He presented his opinion and backed it up with some interesting evidence. He has decided he want to go to Ecuador and try the food. This may have been inspired by the video we watched earlier in the week about food from Ecuador. A lot of it looked tasty. Doug's opinion 'mini-essay' on the Presidency came out hilariously well. Doug has a strong opinion on being president. He does not want the job because it is way too much homework. I emailed these 'mini-essays' (2 paragraphs that state their position and their reasoning) to their teachers which impressed the teachers.

I spent yesterday writing up lesson plans. This is because I forgot to make a lesson plan for yesterday. So, as we went through the daily routine, I was coming up with things off the top of my head for them to do. There was the usual reading and writing in the reading log. The social studies segment was watching a video about the history of trains. Their writing log prompt was about the video that I just whipped off as they were watching the video. Thank goodness we still have a pile of math worksheets. They each did one and graded their own work. They were super excited to do that. Art time was 'painting' with my crappy brush tipped markers on some canvas panels. They boys made pictures of trains. They did a great job. They're still trying to make up their own songs during music time. Science time was spent watching Bill Nye videos. We watched one on volcanoes and one on germs.

Next week's themes are going to be:

ELA - Science Fiction (Billy and I are reading H.G. Well's The Time Machine. I'm going to try to get Doug involved with it too. He may just want to keep reading Smoke Jumpers.)

Math - Worksheets, fractions, and word problems. Doug is going to be getting another page of simple algebra problems.

Social Studies - Timeline of the Industrial revolution, major inventions of the Industrial revolution, kid friendly videos on these topics, and a 'mini essay' on what invention shaped today's technology?

Science - NYS geologic history, looking at some pre-Ice age fossils I own, looking at an Ice age fossil I own, a video about the Ice age, and a video about ancient animals still alive today (i.e. sea sponges and mollusks).

Art - We're going to make some 'fossils' by baking clay in the oven with impressions in them. One paperweight sized one for each kid. There's going to be some 'free' art time as per earlier this week. I'm also going to bust out the 'invention box' for them to make some inventions.

Depending on how cruddy the weather is going to be, the kids may be doing indoor exercises with me. This will likely be like herding cats. I'm aiming to get 15 minutes of exercise in every day. I haven't been doing that because I've been distracted by the kids. So, I'm going to incorporate it into our schedule. I don't know where I'm going to squeeze it into the schedule. But, if I a lucky, today the living room will get cleaned up and I'll have room to roll out my yoga mat.

Home Schooling Wk2: Assessment

I realized that I accidentally didn't plan for all five days but as this has been wearing on me, taking Friday off from actively directing the kids in their learning is not a bad idea. Implementing a regimented schedule works pretty well. It helps that I still have a pile of math worksheets. They're beginning to run a little low so I'm going to have to start writing them out soon. I'm not exactly looking forward to that.

The act of spreading a lesson out over the week in 20 minute blocks is working really well. I got the boys to write 'mini-essays' of 2 paragraphs on the social studies topic that they were working on this week. I typed them up and e-mailed them off to the teachers to let them know what we've been working on. I'm trying to coordinate what I'm doing with what the teachers are working on. The teachers have been surprised by this. I fail to fully grasp why they are surprised and then Beloved reminds me that I'm looking at this from a teacher/educator's perspective. Most parents aren't.

Speaking with the school, they're struggling to get everyone the resources they need and get all the teachers trained on the platform they're going to be using for distance learning. (Thankfully, it is not Blackboard. That is one buggy platform and has been for as long as it has been around. I remember it having a lot of issues when I was using it for college classes. People I know who are presently teaching on Blackboard are still having problems with it, I can only assume the student end of that interface is just as buggy.) The boy's teachers have been in contact with me and doing their best to figure out how to get this new system up and running as quickly as possible.

Where other parents are frustrated because they have no idea what to do, I am frustrated because I hate writing lesson plans and I don't have quite all of the resources I want to use for helping the kids learn while they are out of school. It's a luxury apparently to have internet or some form of a laptop. I find it interesting that this is luxury where we are. We're not in a big city but cable is pretty common in this area. Maybe it is the fact that we're not spending our money on other luxuries and this is the one we use. I don't know. But, as long as we have the internet and I can bash together some kind of lesson, I think we'll be ok.

All Hail Bill Nye the Science Guy!

This morning's home-schooling session was off to a smooth start. The kids did their reading and their reading log with out complaint. Then came math. My 5th grade child decided that subtraction problems were too hard and chose to do a multiplication worksheet. My 7th grade child whipped through his flash cards like they were no big deal. Then came the question of what to do about social studies.

That was when I remembered that Youtube has educational videos. We spent about 45 minutes watching fact videos about former Presidents, the White House, and what the job of being President of the United States entails. The kids were fascinated. I decided to take a different approach than doing a science experiment with them this afternoon. I set them up with Bill Nye the Science Guy's video about rocks. They loved it. That was about when Billy's teacher did her weekly call in to see how we're hanging in.

Billy told her all about the rocks he was learning about and what his favorite type of rock is (granite because it has crystals in it). When he passed the phone over to me, she was still chuckling about his joke "science rocks." We discussed what the school's plans were going forward on the educational front. They were surprised by the amount of the community that didn't have internet access or a computer for their child to use. So, now they're scrambling to find away to supply resources for the kids. At the same time, the teachers are being trained in how to use Google classroom.

I don't know how this is going to go. I have a feeling that the school is going to have a much harder time getting devices to families that don't have a computer for their kids to use and assisting them with internet access than they are with providing meals to the district's families. I'm thinking that I will continue to make my lesson plans and worksheets for a bit longer while the school sorts out what they're doing. And make the kids watch Bill Nye when they get sick of me explaining how things work to them.

I am officially herding cats.

Yesterday started out ok. We got through the ELA and Social Studies portion of the day with out major issues. We even did alright with the Math stuff. Things went completely haywire after lunch as I was washing dishes the boys had an epic fight. There I was, elbows deep in a basin of hot water and the kids are screaming like banshees RIGHT BEHIND ME.

Things went off the rails at that point. We were going to do a science experiment but they decided they were going to sit and read books. I was going to make banana muffins with them but they were acting out because they were bored and I wasn't comfortable with the idea of the kitchen getting destroyed because they decided it was fun to fling batter around or something.

I'm going to leave the dishes for later in the day and try just jumping from activity to activity. Maybe that will keep them from getting bored and fighting. Who knows.

Home schooling: Week 2 - Actual schedule + Work

So, we're on week two of no school. Because the kids need their academics, I am home schooling. The school is promising to send us supplies and instructional materials. With the unofficial quarantine

order (I get that the governor didn't want to scare people by say the state is under quarantine but the PAUSE acronym is stupid and I refuse to use it.), I have no idea if those materials are going to get to us or not. That said, being the person who has back up plans for their back up plans, I put together a schedule and some lesson plans for the kids. They're really rough because I suck at lesson planning.

The dash mark indicates the lesson for a given day, going by order M-F for each subject. Because I have yet to locate the guitar music book, I'm just letting the kids strum away and make up their own songs right now for their music time. I have a stockpile of science kits thanks to MK down in Maryland. She finds the coolest stuff and sends it up for the kids during the holidays. I aim to have weekly themes for the science and social studies things. I've been giving the kids writing prompts for their writing and reading logs. My goal is to eventually get them to work on those independently.

As you can see, I made a mistake in writing up Billy's lesson plan. We're doing the crystal kits today. It's going to be a casual on-going experiment. We have two small kits and one big kit. We're going to observe how fast the crystals grow and figure out which one has the biggest crystals and grew the fastest. We've got books about rocks and fossils in part because of my hobby collecting rocks. So this week's theme is rocks (which the crystal kit is part of because they're growing borax crystals, I believe).

The social studies themes are based on what they were doing in school as of the last time I spoke with their teachers, which was about three days before everything was shut down. Doug already has an opinion on the question of if he wants to be president or not. It's a hard NO. I'm going to get him to give me some evidence to back up that no. Billy has already decided he wants to go to Ecuador. So, I want him to give me reasons why.