School in our house

Well, we were one of the thousands of families who faced crisis-schooling in the spring when schools shut down with a few hours notice and sent our kids home indefinitely with no plan in place. We spent five weeks doing our own thing and holding our breath for what the county rolled out with, and then another six weeks attempting to do "virtual" school on a computer for several hours a day and 3 scheduled zoom calls a week (two for Eleanor, one for Jane). Overall, the school portion of the spring was frustrating at best, and very below-level and a huge waste of time at worst. I don't blame the schools - they didn't have much time or anything to work with, but we definitely don't want a repeat of that for this coming school year.

This coming school year is going to start out completely virtual for 9 weeks and then who knows what part of the "path" (what our county calls it's "return-to-learn" plan) we will end up on. If I had to guess, I would guess that there won't be any in-person learning at all this coming year. Not because of this, but mostly because we have decided we really don't want our kids on computers or tablets during the week (every kid will be assigned a laptop or tablet for the school year), we have decided to homeschool the girls next year. I believe there will be a ton of families that decide to do this so we will be in good company. It was definitely a well thought through choice for us and not something I ever thought I would do, but here we are! We're embracing it and I'm feeling at least cautiously optimistic about the coming year. This spring was very wonderful in the sense of freedom, outdoor and family time, and just generally more unscheduled and less hurried time. With Chris also being home through the end of 2020, that's what we're looking forward to most in the fall.

So, we've still got a month of summer left and we are embracing the pool as much as possible, and then on to school at home!