{"id":6702,"date":"2020-06-19T22:28:21","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T02:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/themaddlife.com\/?p=6702"},"modified":"2020-06-19T22:28:21","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T02:28:21","slug":"schools-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/?p=6702","title":{"rendered":"School’s Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

We still played Alice Cooper\u2019s \u201cSchools Out\u201d last Friday morning.\u00a0 But besides a kitchen dance party blaring \u201cschools out for summer, schools out forever\u201d at the top of our lungs to commensurate the last day of 3rd<\/sup> and 1st<\/sup> grade for the girls, nothing about the last three months of the school year was like any other.<\/p>\n

School abruptly ended Wednesday March 11.\u00a0 Widespread concerns of COVID 19 started about two weeks prior and the county was working on putting some plans in place for virtual learning starting a few weeks later. \u00a0Things got serious and real overnight and school was suddenly cancelled Thursday March 12 and then again Friday March 13 and then for an entire month before virtual learning started in mid-April.\u00a0 The kids had no notice, left all their belongings at school, said no goodbyes, they got on the school bus that Wednesday afternoon having no idea that they wouldn\u2019t step foot in the school again for the remainder of the school year.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t know that we would be quarantined for the next three months, not going out to eat, no going to the grocery store, no hugging and indoor visits with grandma and grandpa, no playdates, no takeout without sanitizing the containers.\u00a0 We were now living in a pandemic experiencing unprecident times.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good thing we liked each other because it\u2019s pretty much been us and only us for three months!\u00a0 We began homeschooling the girls the first week they were out of school.\u00a0 The first five weeks were definitely the honeymoon period.\u00a0 Days were hard but Justin and I managed to work demanding jobs while still homeschooling the girls with a schedule that consisted of language arts and math workbooks; reading; puzzles, creative time to include science, engineering, photography, cooking, and art; physical activity, and electronic academic time.\u00a0\u00a0 We were busy managing it all, often staying up late to review subjects with them and lesson plan for the next day or catching up on work from taking extra-long breaks during the day to be hands on with the girls, but we had a rhythm.<\/p>\n

Mid-April the county started virtual learning.\u00a0 It was a disaster so much so that classes ended up being cancelled the first week while the county worked out system issues.\u00a0 Week two had similar challenges and virtual learning was again postponed another week.<\/p>\n

Week three things started going smoothly, but there was a wide discrepancy in the expectations and assignments of the teachers, not to mention that between the virtual learning synchronous class and the assignments, the girls still had a lot of time in their day.\u00a0 We continued with much of the homeschool but a scaled back version which eliminated much of the creative time and extra time to relax. Avery and Emerson also started meeting outside for math \u201cclass\u201d with one of the neighbors Ms. Stype a few days a week along with a few of the other third grade girls.\u00a0 Avery started meeting with Ms. Dishek twice a week to type.\u00a0 The girls attended their teacher\u2019s office hours a few times a week. \u00a0Dance classes started back up in April virtually, which too was a new experience. Days were busy to say the least!<\/p>\n

Fast forward to June 12, the girls officially finished 3rd<\/sup> and 1st<\/sup> grades, exactly 3 months to the day that school inside the school abruptly came to a halt.\u00a0 No backpacks, no walk to the bus stop, no lunches to pack, no teachers or friends to hug, but three happy girls who took it all in stride and had a great memorable school year<\/p>\n

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We still played Alice Cooper\u2019s \u201cSchools Out\u201d last Friday morning.\u00a0 But besides a kitchen dance party blaring \u201cschools out for summer, schools out forever\u201d at the top of our lungs to commensurate the last day of 3rd and 1st grade … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}