My survival experience from homeschooling during lockdown

I love being at home, LOVE IT. My home is my sanctuary and people often joke that I am like a hermit crab as I am at my happiest when I am at home with my family. This part of isolation was easy for me, more time at home while still being able to go for walks around our local area was a breeze. So here I am living my best life and then there was the dreaded announcement I prayed would never happen.

“Schools are closing.”

Just to be clear, I LOVE my children, but I am not afraid to admit that they can be difficult at times and sending them to school is a welcome break for my sanity. The school closures here in QLD, Australia started a week before the scheduled 2 weeks school holiday anyway so we just took each day at a time and did whatever we could at home. Then the 5 weeks of “home learning” commenced.

I have never EVER desired to have a career in teaching; I have never even had the slightly inkling that teaching would be something I would ever be good at in any way shape or form. Luckily for me, my children are in grade 2 and grade 4 so surely their work wouldn’t be too hard?

WRONG!

I admit that grade 2 was a little easier than grade 4 but there were more times than not that I had to google how to do things or by week 5 just google the answer.

My 7-year-old was shocked by my lack of knowledge “Mum you’re not as smart as I used to think you were.”

My 9-year-old was a little more empathetic and sort of enjoyed my lack of knowledge in hope that it would mean we would skip some of his work (he wasn’t wrong.)

I started off the home learning week so organised, everything was printed, we sat at the dining room table so I could help both kids equally, we exercised and limited time on technology. Then things started to rapidly deteriorate, the next 5 memes are a good representation of how the weeks progressed.

Now, I don’t want it to seem like my home school experience was all bad. The kids enjoyed sleeping in, we actually managed to finish school work before 11am most days and those 6 hours the kids spend at school no longer seem as short as what they used to. I have learnt that teaching is 1000% NOT a career I will EVER look into and home school with NEVER EVER be an option for our family.

It’s taken me a week to recover from the 8 whole weeks my children were home from school and i’m happy to be able to think for myself again!

Still home schooling? Here’s my advice.

Thanks for reading! Please spread some kindness with the world today and take care. ✌

#2020 #PARENTING #SELFDEVELOPMENT