Because of the pandemic, our county decided not to open schools this year and to have all the kids do online school. It has been one of the toughest moments of my life because I want my kids to have a normal life and for Evie's kindergarten experiences to be awesome but our freaking government would rather live in fear, like everything else this year. So I cried and prayed and stressed myself out to the max about whether I should homeschool them, but finally decided to give CCSD a chance to prove themselves. It was really exciting at first because Evie's Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Smalla, showed up at our house to give Evie her golden ticket that tells her what house she was put into (their school does Harry Potter style houses) and to introduce herself. Evie was ecstatic and was so excited for school! Austin also got to meet his teacher, Mrs. Brown. in the car drive through as we picked up his school supplies from her in the parking lot. This is the extent of human interaction these kids have gotten from school and it sucks. But we pushed through and did our best to make it all exciting! Every day there was crying and my stress level was so intense from all the technology issues, internet outages, server crashes, and just outright insanity, that I have gotten a stomach ulcer, felt suicidal, find myself freaking out over everything, and half of my body went numb. So I knew something needed to change.
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Evie's teacher showed up with her golden ticket saying she now belongs to the House GLOSSARIUM! Her house color is purple!
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She immediately raced next door to find out what house her best friend, Bella, got!
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Since then, I have bought a Christian based homeschool curriculum and tomorrow is Austin's last day of online school with Ellis Elementary. I was fully prepared to pull Evie from school as well, but after our experiment yesterday to homeschool and "see how it goes before we officially pull the plug," she decided she would rather stick with online school. She loves Mrs. Smalla and her teacher even called me from her personal phone and begged me to keep Evie in her class. So I am doing what's best for everyone and doing both styles of school. While Evie is logged in with Mrs. Smalla, I will be homeschooling Austin. Then, once Evie is done, we will all do some combined homeschooling lessons to supplement what Evie isn't learning in class. So she will have the best of both worlds and Austin will be done with all this testing Bull Shi* that our county for some reason thinks is more important than teaching the kids while they struggle to learn online.... I can't even tell you how angry all of this makes me.I never thought I would be homeschooling my kids but this year has been a complete shit show and it doesn't surprise me at all that the school district made some pretty stupid decisions that were not at all in the benefit of the kids.
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Our homeschooling experiment went pretty well on this beautiful fall day! We had random cool weather and took our learning outdoors!
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Austin was especially in his element and told me this is the style of learning he wants for the rest of the year. Online schooling has been so hard on him.
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I was really surprised that after this beautiful day Evie still wanted to do online schooling, but she is such an extroverted child and NEEDS social interaction in whatever way she can get!
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With how crazy everything is and how fast life changes, I wouldn't be surprised if we mix things up again 5 or 6 more times before we get this school year all figured out, but such is 2020!! In the meantime, I will enjoy more one on one time with my boy as we enter the world of homeschooling and Evie will enjoy all her fun on the computer with her amazing teacher!
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