A Mom’s ‘Ria’lity: Homeschooling Recap, Week 5

Another week, another chance to channel my creativity into what I hope will eventually turn out to be a successful learning experience for my girls. I like to describe my lifestyle these days as “Insanity Adjacent.” Kinda like: ‘I see you over there, Crazy Pants, just lingering so I know you’re coming for me … I’m looking straight ahead but there you are in my peripherals … like a flipping hall monitor, hiding strategically – partway behind the open door to the gym so I don’t see you until I’m just about to turn into the bathroom eight seconds after the bell rang because my teacher is ALWAYS late to start this class so I’m gonna quick hop in there and then head to math but nooooo, Insanity, you’re going to turn me right around, aren’t you? You’re going to turn me around and send me back to the class to get a hall pass and now I’m actually going to miss part of a lesson because you’re such a damn stickler for the rules … you do more harm than good, Insanity. More harm. Than good.

Now that I’m done with that tangent, I’ll recap what was a pretty successful week of homeschooling. To reiterate, I generally work both Monday and Tuesday nights while my kids are with their dad. I finish up my 24 hours worth of overnight shifts on Wednesday morning at 7:30 am. My kids get dropped off on Wednesday morning at 10 am. The first few weeks saw much frustration on Wednesdays when I planned a “full” day of schoolwork knowing I would be running on roughly two hours of sleep. That was dumb. This week, thankfully, I had some pretty good backup. I recruited my partner in insanity prevention – slash – substitute teacher to welcome my kids home while I slept and guide them on a scavenger-hunt style approach to schoolwork. Not as fancy as it sounds, I wrote a bunch of rhymes on index cards to tell the girls which task to complete next. I included some chores, and snack time. I even wrote a card to tell them when it was appropriate for them to wake me up gently. Their sub took them on an unauthorized field trip for lunch to give me more time to sleep. I like his initiative, that one’s got potential. Overall a good start to the week.

One of their tasks, however, went awry in a way I SHOULD have expected but was hopeful anyway. Since it was Thanksgiving in Canada, I printed leaf shapes on coloured construction paper and left my pupils with the task of writing what they were thankful for on each leaf. My star pupil (Jules) came through with a pretty solid list … family, soccer, sister, 4 wheeler, etc. Ria took a less traditional approach to the assignment. Her leaves read as follows: “my pee,” “the garbage,” “my poo,” “my 4 wheeler,” “my family.” I’m going to assume she is thankful for poo and pee because it means she is well-nourished and has waste to excrete. Nonetheless, I made her do it over.

I’m really digging that some of the lessons include Netflix or YouTube shows, as it gives us time to sit and learn passively, and some of it is actually stuff that interests me too!

I drastically reduced electronics time for the girls and myself this week and there was far less frustration amongst the crew. I loathe being told “just wait” or “hold on” because they want to do just one more TikTok or finish another run in Subway Surfer. I felt like I was giving them the current version of the “walking to school in the snow uphill both ways with holes in my boots and I didn’t complain” speech when I actually uttered the words “you don’t know how good you have it … there was a time when cell phones and iPads weren’t even a thing!”

I think part of the success of this week was due to spreading the work over the entire five days they were home, including the weekend. This made them less likely to get burned out by having too much to do at once. It gave ME time to shower and feed myself. It gave us time to go for bikerides to the park. I dare say we may have made a little progress in this adventure we call homeschooling.