23/03/2020 Day 3
Dear Diary, no one should have to homeschool children whilst also trying to fit in 7.5 hours of work. It’s not humanly possible. And what’s worse? No biscuits in the house.
Are digestives biscuits? Or are they really dust, crushed and shaped into a biscuit to fool the unsuspected person? (I know they are, it’s a rhetorical question – for emphasis of my PAIN) I miss langues de chat and madeleines – hand on, that’s cak… whatever, I miss all the other food made with fat and sugar and all the good stuff. It is in times like these that I miss French biscuits. Instead I had to have a carrot. This working at home is making me psychologically hungry and I am a complete lightweight.
I wrote this late last night when I was tired and I think it shows a bit.
The kids were absolute stars. We started the day as planned. They made their beds and helped sort out a basket-full of washing just because it was on the schedule. I am learning things I never knew before but I think it’s just the novelty that’s making them do it and it probably won’t last a week.
At 9 am I set them up for the free daily PE lesson with Joe Wicks from The Body Coach TV with apparently the rest of the world (did he get like 600K visits or something, the man has struck exposure gold with this). I absconded to the office and about 20 minutes later one of them collapsed at the bottom of the stairs and huffed: ‘we are so tired we want to stop now it’s too hard!’. I came down to find that Joe Wicks himself was also out of breath. This is a kids’ PE session Joe, what are you doing? I must check it out properly to make sure he’s not on a mission to turn a whole generation of primary school kids into body builders in 12 weeks.
I can’t remember the rest of the day but I think things went OK. I already can’t remember how the day went. This does not bode well.
24/03/2020 Day 4
Dear Diary, Tuesday is my day off and Badgerman is not at work so we have been more available for the kids. We did the PE session as a family, which was the best and also the worst. I ran out of breath half-way through the warm-up, a sure sign that I need to keep going with it but god it nearly killed us all!
We followed this lesson plan (a whole week on Space) and adjusted it for a 6 year old and 8 year old and it made everything way easier. Badgerman borrowed maths materials from his school including two foldable desks and some small whiteboards so we are all set. The girls had their first Zoom with their friends (cue hysterical laughter, they were SO excited) and I can already tell it is going to really help them as not seeing their friends is going to be the most challenging bit yet.
Emilie’s 42-day drawing challenge we posted yesterday was a big hit on Facebook and she quite rightly felt really chuffed with the response. As one of her friends told her: “you’re almost famous!”.
Badgerman went to the shops and came back with most of the things we needed so I am delighted. We’re not buying anything we don’t immediately need, and I’m not sure if we needed to fumigate everything he brought back before putting them in the fridge-freezer. I washed my hands twice and cleaned the handles I touched afterwards. It’s so hard to know what is appropriate protection and what is overkill.
I’m going to try to switch off from social media for the rest of the day now and relax with a book. Tomorrow is another day.
Keep safe everyone, and for all our sakes please stay at home!
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