Spring eLearning

Since we were on Spring Break when everything shut down, the school district had to scramble to setup virtual learning. Needless to say, we had an extra long Spring Break. The kids have always asked to be home schooled. Well, they got their wish. Day one of eLearning.

At first, eLearning consisted of mostly asychronous work. We, as parents, had to quickly learn about all of the differents apps and programs the kids used at school. Thank goodness for Presley. She was able to help me and Bentley A LOT. One of the apps we used was called SeeSaw. A lot of their assignments were posted to SeeSaw and the kids would complete and submit them. Some assignments required them to post pictures of themselves. Presley posted a picture of her reading in her reading nook.

When we first got home, everyone on our street had all traveled for Spring Break, so we kept our distance for a few days to make sure everyone stayed healthy. Once the stay at home orders went into place, we decided that we would let the kids play with 3 other families on the street. They had Art Class in the driveway one day.

Bentley had a project sorting legos by color.

Presley helping the boys with an assignment. (They spent a lot of time outside.)

Kiley joining in on the school day with some kinetic sand. That is about the extent of things we could get her to do.

Presley working on a First Aid Kit for Girl Scouts.

The only way Kiley would sit on a Zoom is if she had something to play with. She didn't get much out of the Zoom calls except seeing her friends' faces.

This is just a glimpse of how much we all DID NOT do well with eLearning. Presley would never have written that on a paper at school.

Presley and Bentley watching their Friday Assembly Virtually.

Another picture of Kiley on a Zoom.

I absolutely LOVE this picture. The more the weeks passed, Presley realized that she did better by doing one subject each day. The first time I helped her with Social Studies, she scored a 60/100 on it. So I had to call in backup...GUY! It was a challenge, but we were able to get Guy the app and login information so he could see what she was looking at. She would FaceTime Guy on my iPad and then do her assignment on her Chromebook. She and Guy would read the articles and take the quizzes together. Needless to say, she got all 100s the rest of the semester.

Poor Kiley was so lost during all this. She missed school and missed her friends. Most importantly she missed having structure. I will get more into the details in later blogs.

One perk of eLearning is that you can swim during school in the middle of April.

Bentley ended up in some pretty random places trying to focus during his Zoom calls or when working on his assignments.

Presley also took her zoom calls in some random places.

Kiley coloring.

Art Class by the pool.

I am pretty sure Bentley was doing some sort of scavenger hunt in this picture...or he was just plain delirious.

Presley made this shadow box of an Ecosystem for Science. It turned out really cute.

Kiley didn't have many zoom calls, so we would FaceTime with her friend, Will.

Bentley needed a change of scenery. He said the seats were more comfortable in the wine room.

The girls emptying the dishwasher to fulfill one of Kiley's school goals. I'll touch on the hair in a later post.

Cleaning the table.

We had to send in pictures of the kids making hearts with their hands for Teacher Appreciation Week.

Another location and position.

Presley's sweet teachers came by the house to suprise her and left her a sign for our yard.

Fun day of arts & crafts. I will talk more about things these kids to stay busy. This is just one of many.

Snack time...

End of the Year Teacher Gifts. We put them in our trunk with supplies we needed to return at the end of the year.

Some of the kids artwork from earlier in the year.

The teachers left letters to the students in their windows. Please excuse the reflection.

After reading these sweet letters, I was beyond emotional. I can't believe these kids missed out on almost an entire semester with these amazing teachers. It is time we will never get back with them as Bentley will move up to 2nd Grade and Presley to 4th. I went from spending time volunteering up at the school on a weekly basis, eating lunch with them and doing special things for the teachers...to not being able to step foot in the school and teaching the kids at home. Teachers and parents came together to help make eLearning as best as we could, but none of it was ideal for any of us.

This isn't all of our Spring related school activities. I apologize these blogs are going to kind of be all over the place since I am so far behind. We got creative and had a Virtual Field day, we attended drive by school and birthday parades and of course we still took last day of school pictures. We also did a lot of fun things on the street to keep the kids happy and busy. We had a covid friendly Easter, found a new pet, did a lot of cooking and cleaning, projects around the house and so much more. So please stay tuned!