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.
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