Wow! 2020 has been quite the year. It seems that the insanity of 2020 has compelled me to log back into blogger after a 6 year hiatus. LB (our 10 year old son) and I will be embarking on a new adventure this school year - Homeschooling! I wanted to find a fun way to document this time together so I'm hoping I can find the energy to blog fairly regularly.
LB attended our small and sweet neighborhood school from Kindergarten to 4th grade and he had wonderful teachers, made great friends, and it was truly a soft spot to land when he was five years old and adjusting to full time school. However, our district (the largest in the state) is starting the school year virtually and may or may not eventually go hybrid. The district made the right decision to be virtual, given our COVID numbers mid-summer, but we had a hard time envisioning LB being on the computer for long stretches of the day. He is active, likes hands-on activities, and is a social kid. We are incredibly privileged to be able to make this decision. I am grateful we had choices, as I know many do not. These are crazy hard times. I tossed and turned many nights wondering how we should proceed with this school year. There were some days when I experienced anxiety that I hadn't felt since somewhere in the midst of our adoption process. However, once we made the decision and I started to really envision what we could do and how we could spend our days, I started to get really excited. LB is also going to be able to attend a two day program at a school nearby that offers outdoor education for homeschoolers. As an only child, this opportunity to socialize with other kids is crucial for him. So he and I will homeschool together three days a week and he will go to this new school two days a week (assuming COVID numbers don't spike). I have mentally prepared myself that we might be full time homeschooling in the event of school being closed. Thankfully, his soccer team has been practicing all summer and was recently cleared to start playing games. Being able to see friends and do the thing he loves most has been such an emotional boost for LB. We feel like his team has implemented good safety procedures and since the kids are outdoors we feel comfortable with letting him play. LB also started tennis lessons about a month or so ago and has enjoyed doing that with a few friends.
We are officially starting our homeschool year on Wednesday, September 9th and he will start his two-day program on September 17th. It will be a fairly low-key first week, as he has a playdate and meet the teacher with his new school and his annual well-visit with his pediatrician scheduled. My plan is close out the week on Friday with an at-home service project through an organization I love called, Seeds of Caring. I am sure I will blog more about them at a later date.
Before I delve into homeschool stuff, I do want to document a project that I finally finished. During the shutdown, my neighbor emailed me a fun COVID-19 time capsule project that had all sorts of activities for LB. He filled out an All About Me page, wrote a letter to himself about quarantine, drew pictures of our house and activities we were doing to keep busy, etc. It gave me the idea to create an actual time capsule. So I collected some of the school projects we did in the spring, the artwork we had on the front door, a mask, and a few other things and put them all in a plastic bin. I also created a photo book on Shutterfly with all my favorite pictures from March - May that depicted how we kept busy. The photo book arrived today so the box is now complete.
Well, wish us luck! I am excited to share about our successes and challenges along the way. I feel like I learned a lot about how LB learns over the spring shutdown and I am planning on giving him a healthy dose of agency in projects we tackle and how we go about tackling them. I also hope this blog here holds me accountable and keeps me on my toes. We can do hard things!
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