Working from home has been an adjustment. I mean don’t get me wrong it has its perks. The commute in North Dakota even in Fargo is at most 15 minutes on a good day – but nothing beats walking downstairs, grabbing my laptop and coffee and walking to my makeshift office, the kitchen table. The big adjustment has been while working from home I am also trying to homeschool a preschooler. Key word is trying.
I read all the parenting how-to books before becoming a mother, but I never thought I would be solely responsible of teaching my child! That was not in any book I read! I have a teenager navigating distance learning but thankfully he is old enough, and more thankfully, mature enough to be able to navigate on his own with little supervision. I ask each day if he got his work down, each week if he contacted his teachers, and I check his grades regularly. I also have a four-year-old at home who takes a little more guidance and structure than the teenager, obviously, but he is also used to a day of learning when he was in daycare full-time pre-pandemic. And, I didn’t fully appreciate daycare as much as I do now, now that we are on week seven of staying at home. I probably thought I did – but I didn’t truly appreciate all that they do, enough.
We have been blessed with a great daycare and some outstanding teachers and the room my son was in pre-pandemic was the BEST. It really was school, preschool, for my son. The days were structured like school and every week there was a theme and every day the activities, art and learning surrounded that theme. I watched as our son grew academically every day at daycare. Now he is stuck with me, his mom. Well that’s no fun. And, although I learned all there is to be a mom from some books, instincts and trial and error – when did I become a certified teacher!
Thankfully, his teachers got me ready for this path. I know what his teachers did in his classroom and with help from Scholastic I am muddling through this homeschooling a preschooler thing. I am going off the idea of theme weeks with theme days. We start with our Scholastic remote learning for the day which involves a video, book and activity. We’ve learned about how plants grow, pond habitats, bear hibernation, insects, space and astronauts, night and day, among many other things. We are on our 31st theme today – I think, is it Monday…still April? Then we do the activity associated with what we learned of a drawing or play dough sculpture and now that it is nice out we’ve expanded to a field trip to the pond or a bear hunt in the neighborhood. The whole day’s activities are around the theme. Now before you start thinking I am Mother of the Year, there is a movie put on in the afternoon each day so I can get some uninterrupted work done. To get back to your good graces and make myself feel better, I do make sure the movie has something to do with that day’s theme. The theme extends into the night with bedtime stories of books incorporating the day’s theme as well.
Now some days are better than others. Some days he wants to practice writing his name and tracing his letters, and then some days he adamantly DOES NOT. Honestly though, most days have been a lot of fun and I usually can’t wait to see what we are going to learn that day, together. That is all that really matters. We are together and we are all trying our best.
We will never take for granted all that we had before the pandemic when we eventually get it back. I know my sons and I can’t wait to see all the teachers and friends at school and at daycare. I especially can’t wait as I have had to fill their shoes and they are truly big shoes to fill.
