1st 1/2 week - 2.5 days was long enough!

Our district's scheduled Spring Break was March 16th-20th, during which many of the restrictions (i.e., restaurants closing, no more than 10 allowed per gathering) occurred in Dallas county. So we were given an extra two days (Mon & Tues, 23-24th) for the teachers and parents to get organized before teachers were to check in with students between Wed & Friday and official "At Home Learning" to begin Monday, March 30th.

Being the Type A personality that I am and wanting to use this time to challenge my kids, I decided to plan and begin our "Home School" on Wednesday (3/25), with a short planning session on Tuesday, also the same day we would begin NO video games, TV, etc during school hours. After more than a week off, and way to much non-educational screen time we were all in for a rude awakening!

On Tuesday, March 24th I gave a writing assignment to all three of my boys, ages 15, 12 & 8:

• New Skills You Would Like to Learn
• Skills You Would Like to Improve
• Subjects You're Interested in, or want to know more about 

My 2nd Grader's first response was quite comical for a New Skill he would like to learn...
"How to give Mrs. Voegtle a Chill Pill"... LOL!

The first assignment did NOT go well! It was a test for my setting of limits, including a bit of yelling to let them know this IS school and I AM SERIOUS. Surprisingly, my 6th grader, who by nature has always been agreeable was pushing back the most. I let my high school student do his own work in his room on his computer. The 2nd & 6th grader were at the kitchen table with me.

Thankfully, despite the pushback, what resulted was a great list of things they wanted to learn. After 10 minutes (that was all they could handle) and a decent list on the 1st prompt, I asked them to share. Then I had Carson (12) & Marin (8) write their initials on their brother's list on the items they would like also, to find the common areas of interest. And I had them each star their top three.  I am hoping to get their buy-in, and be able to tailor their "At Home Learning" to what they want to learn to make this more interesting for us all! 

Here is what we ended up with:

Collin:

Carson:

Marin:

I was pleased to see there were some areas of overlap, such as an interest in Business & Stocks from my two oldest. Since my dad is a former Financial Advisor, and is a great teacher, I asked him to be a guest lecturer for the boys' enrichment class.

I created a schedule on Tuesday to begin on Wednesday. I asked the boys if they wanted to begin @9 & get out at 3, or start @ 9:30 and go until 3:30. Of course, they asked for shorter hours all together (which we may do), but at this point I want them to realize this is SCHOOL and have as much similarity to the school day they're used to. So we picked 9:30-3:30 & I plan to start us all together each morning.

A few notes on the schedule and modifications will be making:

• We need a 3-5 minute break between each of the class periods, to go outside, stretch or something active (pushups or jumping jacks). Will incorporate.
• We do not need Religious Education each day, as we begin with Bible Lesson & prayer. I will rename that period "Enrichment" to allow for a rotation of subjects of interest, and we plan to stick to an official Religious Education once a week (probably on Wed & Sun like they have during the regular school schedule), plus a 30 min @ Home Beach Club on Fridays. 

I guess this means we are ready for the first official week of "At Home Learning"...