Pond Life

Whenever the weather is warm enough, Simon and Ellie spend a lot of time down at the creek part of the pond, catching critters like tadpoles, minnows and crawdads.

Alice, Vivian and Ed (neighbor kids) will also play at the creek too, but not with the same dedication as Ellie and Simon.

New Pump

On Friday afternoon, at the end of stay-at-home week #2, Zac finished installing a pump for the kids to pump water up from the pond to water their gardens.

Homeschooling: Week 2

Week two of our new stay-at-home life was much like the first but with a few developments. Zac was working completely from home by now. Alice and Izzy starting doing FaceTime Playdoh Playdates, which were a great way for our extrovert to have some extra social stimulation.  And we also got the chromebook, which worked great for Alice to access her school online learning websites.

The routine was still that in the morning I would supervise their schoolwork, Zac would work from his office set up in the basement, and then after lunch we'd switch roles. Usually the kids would be done with their schoolwork and could play outside and with the neighbors all afternoon. Simon and Ellie were having a blast together every day.

Gifts

The kids sometimes like to have "present mornings" where we have to open a bunch of packages of paper balled up around some rock or shell. They love it.

Zac took the kids fishing at the pond, while I spent the afternoon getting ready for classes the next day.

Ever since we've moved here, I've been very appreciative of how lucky we were to get such a great location. It's really paying off now that we're not allowed supposed to go anywhere. We have a big fun backyard with a pond and creek. We have neighbors the kids can play with and a cul-de-sac they can ride their bikes in. It's truly a gift.

Umstead Creek

On Friday afternoon, as our reward for surviving week one, we took the kids on a hike to the creek at Umstead. We figured it would be less crowded there on Friday than on Saturday. Since almost everything else was closed by now, nature was the only thing left open. And with the lovely warm spring weather, we figured the park would be inundated with people this weekend.

The kids had fun frolicking in the water and searching for creatures. Alice made a friend and rolled around in a deep part of the water for a while (practically swimming in March!). It was good to get out after being home all week.

We had a fire that night, the weather was so warm and beautiful. About 80 degrees.

Homeschooling: Week 1

The first week of homeschooling the kids and converting my classes to online digital learning was intense.  Here's a brief summary of how it went down.

For me, I had a teacher workday on Monday, where I went into the building in the afternoon once Zac came home from work to watch the kids. I put all my digital files from the school network onto my google drive. I packed up my binders for each of the remaining units and made sure to bring my books home too. I gathered up all of my grading (tons of it) and cleaned out all the desk so there wouldn't be a rotten banana peal or something awful to discover later. I met briefly with a teacher I collaborate with all the time (Lisa Springle) and we made a plan for how to kick off our Romeo and Juliet unit.  It his hard to explain how hard it was to rethink everything and figure out how to do everything online. The irony was I had planned out the rest of the year down to the day, and it was supposed to be smooth sailing from here on out, because we show them so many movie clips from Romeo and Juliet that you get a chance to catch your breath in this unit. All that was gone in one fell swoop and we were back to square one.  But we came up with a plan and got our first lesson ready to be posted, so it was productive. It's so nice to not have to go through this transition alone.

On the homefront, for Simon, his teacher had had the foresight to send him home with a bunch of worksheets on Friday. So I just picked 3 each day--one math, one reading, and one spelling, for him to do each day.  He resisted, but I wouldn't let him play until he got it done. The irony is that he's a stellar student at school, but a limp noodle at home.

For Alice, I could let her be more creative. Her teacher hadn't sent anything home, so I let her come up with her own learning ideas each day, and she could use some apps on the iPad for math. Her teacher was emailing and telling us to get on all these school learning sites, but they were hard to access from the iPad. Zac had mentioned a long time ago possibly getting Alice a Chromebook, and it seemed like now we definitely needed one. I suggested he order it right away before everybody else trying to homeschool their kids realized they also needed one and the prices went up or they sold out.

We got through the week, just barely, with me watching the kids in the morning and overseeing their school work, while simultaneously being inundated with emails all morning.  After lunch, Zac would take over and I would take a walk then go up to the office to work all afternoon, evening, and night to get the next day's lessons ready. It was intense, and I would start to spiral if I imagined doing this for the rest of the year. It just didn't seem sustainable.

Alice's Irish jig

Alice was determined to celebrate St. Patrick's day.

Social Distancing

Simon and Ellie are not good at practicing social distancing. But they're so cute.

For some day far in the future where we may not remember what this means, social distancing is the phrase that is all the rage right now. It means staying home as much as possible and staying 6 feet away from people in public.

Art & Gardens

On the morning of Saturday, March 14th, Alice painted some really cool (and ominous) pictures. On the afternoon of March 14th, Zac built the kids some raised garden beds in the back yard. And by the evening of March 14th, we got the news that all Wake County schools would be closed starting Monday due to the Covid-19 outbreak.  Suddenly, the idea of teaching my classes online just got a lot harder. But we enjoyed the day, now maybe with more urgency as the future started to seem very uncertain.

Schools closed for Covid-19

On Friday the 13th, my school had the first of what was supposed to be two flex days. I taught the morning session, but had the afternoon block free. I'd suspected we were heading towards closing due to the Covid-19 pandemic, since things had escalated quickly over the week in North Carolina, with colleges sending students home or extending spring breaks. Coincidentally, and fortunately, a teacher who had been using Google Classroom (an online course management system) was able to train me on it that afternoon, and at 2:30 pm the principal came on the announcements to tell everyone that we would start digital learning days (hereafter known as DLDs) next week. It was stated that it would just be for two weeks, then we'd move spring break up a week, and return to school on April 6th. I doubted things would be under control that quickly, but it was easier to face a two week closure than an indefinite one.

Rumors were that the elementary schools would stay open (due to childcare concerns and kids being a low-risk population), so in my mind I was thinking I would just come in to work in my classroom every day, or a couple of times a week. Anyway, teaching my classes online would be challenging, but with the kids at school still it would be totally manageable.

I sadly bid farewell to my empty classroom, wondering when I would ever see it filled with students again.

On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store to get in on the pandemic panic buying. We're used to this sort of thing here, because the grocery stores are raided every time there's talk of a hurricane or rumors of snowfall.  But the store was surprisingly calm and not super low on anything other than toilet paper. There were plenty of beans and other canned survival foods.  Anyway, I didn't really have a plan, so I mainly just bought random things that seemed yummy and shelf-stable or freezable.

The person next to me in the check-out line clearly had a plan though!

The Bone

About a week and half ago, we went to Izzy's for a bonfire. When collecting firewood, they found this animal bone. Natasha was kind enough to let the kids bring it home. It has been a prized item ever since.  One day, I noticed they had made a little shrine for it on the front steps.

Swurfing with Simon

Cookies with Cam

The kids' school was closed for a teacher workday on Monday, so Cam made cookies with them.

In the afternoon, Zac went in with Simon for his "student led" conference. Zac reports that "it went about as well as you would expect." (For Simon, that means not well.)

Beach Day 3

On Sunday, we lazed around the rental unit all morning and had an early lunch there.  Then we drove to Carolina Beach State Park and hiked around the inlet there.

We bit farewell to our lovely beach house and drove over to Carolina Beach State Park to hike. It was a beautiful day and we had so much fun playing in the unique environment.

Simon loves to build nests.

We enjoyed the long leaf pines.

We found a fun little lookout hill to have our snack at.

The kids were very tired on the hike back to the van.

We finally made it back to our vehicle, stopped at a bbq restaurant for supper, and got home at night.  What a fun day!

Retrospective note: The Covid-19 virus was confirmed in NC (Wake County) on March 3rd. By March 14th all the schools were closed and we were told to wash our hands all the time and stay 6 feet away from anyone.  So we just barely got this trip in under the wire.

Also, by Monday we were all sick with colds. Or was it covid?