I woke up feeling much better than yesterday. The nerve pain was not as intense and that alone was allowed me to be more present. The team and I (my wife and me) had an aggressively active plan for the students (dem kids). We scheduled the usual 9a-11a Academic slots but spent the lunch hour running to the school for district-provided lunch (kids had to be present to receive food) and district-provided laptops (kids had to be present to receive electronics). If you’re wondering was it necessary in this age of covid-19 quarantine, YES. Look homie, the grocery stores and our shopping needs aren’t really vibing right now. We needed that lunch for a break, breather, saver on in-house materials. The laptops, I’ll explain later. 😉. With my wife being home, she ran point guard on this mission, driving, talking to officials, etc. Bout an hour, we were back at the crib and the kids were excited than a mug for those school lunches. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 SIIIIIIIIKE! My spoiled kids were staring in disbelief and horror at those district-provided lunches. “HOW COULD Y’ALL?!!” Maaaaaaaaan, eff dem kids.
First, the effect of laptops
The addition of a third laptop eased the need for rotations; that was a good thing. It also complicated things because all three kids would be at the dinner/kitchen table for school assignments at SOME point. By the time we got settled with it, the kids only had the PM Academic shift of two hours and everything was kosher. The first issue is NOT their off-task visiting of websites. Yes, that is a problem but it was expected. The first issue was the need for EARPHONES. I mentioned it yesterday but I didn’t go out and buy any. We have two pair of earbuds so someone just had to roll without buds and play their school assignment like a dance hall DJ. My first grader was given videos to watch and had to take notes so she got buds. My 5th grader was supposed to create videos so she got buds. My son wanted buds but nothing about his stuff was that serious despite his articulate attempts to convince us otherwise. This will have to be the standard routine, ensuring earphones/buds are with the appropriate student. As for the goofing off, it wasn’t that bad. Granted, we only completed the PM session but with them all having a laptop, I had my laptop and just being at the table kinda prevented the non-sense. The three laptops meant the t.v. was open again so we jammed that classical, study music without interruptions. Fingers crossed about tomorrow’s assignments!
How READING has stomped back into our lives
This app is a game changer. My mother-in-law, former college head of library services, gave us the scoop on Overdrive. It is directly linked to public libraries across the nation and allows users to check out books, ebooks, epubs, audiobooks, videos and anything else available at that particular location. 😛 Daaaaaaaawg, my kids better NOT act like they don’t have a book to read during our reading times. I pay them for book reports but no one had taken advantage during the entire school year. Not a single book report was completed! Then came the quarantine and Daddy’s Academy of Gratitude, I got two book reports in the first two weeks. BOOM. I’m toying with the idea of a new rule, 1 hour of reading = 2 hours of screen time. The Overdrive app gives us an opportunity to have Family Book Club for the first time. My 8th grader and 1st grader both read one of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and their conversations over the last week or so have been magical to hear. *sniff* My 5th grader and I have scheduled our own little book club over something she was reading.
Adding school district lunches to our routine
It won’t be a regular occurance/activity for us but it was cool beans to know that district lunches are an option. They had vehicles spaced apart, employees wore gloves and we even received a breakfast for tomorrow! The selection was baked potatoes with BBQ meat (My wife was excited about “mommy-ing the lunch up a little extra”. Breakfast was cinnamon buns and chocolate milk. It’s in the works that on her days off, we incorporate this to continue saving dollars and keep our day as efficient as possible.
I had NO idea they liked old school movies so much!
We’ve gotten into a habit of watching an old school movie with our lunch hour. Glory, Big Shots, and the 1994 Richie Rich were our first go-arounds. We start and stop during the lunch hour so it takes us pretty much 3 days to watch anything. I’m sure parents know how much kids complain about watching home movies. Well, at least mine will. 😒 Anywho, the students realized that they would miss the movie part of lunch due to our goings and let us know that they did sincerely enjoy the old movies. They actually looked forward to watching the movies and liked when we told our childhood stories that spurred the movie selection. For Glory, I shared harrowing tales of my 6th grade year and how much drama surrounded our class hearing the language and discussions of slavery. Big Shots was my story of running away from home at the age of the four, making it across town and earning the most memorable whooping of my life. On Richie Rich, my wife exploded with school stories of her middle school years at a Magnet school and the differences between her school and current schools. The kids moan and groan so much that we didn’t think they appreciated or enjoyed the time but they do! WIN.
Gratitude Assignment
I stuck with my help-the-neighbor themed Gratitude Assignment. The neighbor is ME, aka da lil handicapped homie, and the assignment was to START cleaning the garage. We gathered clothes, shoes, toys and other junk to stack up for Goodwill. We swept down spiderwebs, made sure bikes worked and rearranged the piles of junk that we’ve can’t move yet. We separated trash from junk. We made a full day in that bad boy!
