Home school ain't cool

Today was our first day of home school. Sorry, not home school, remote learning. It was not what I anticipated when I got out of bed this morning.

I thought this week was going to be the last week of term. Like, in person attending at school type last week of term. But at 815 this morning we received a note from the school advising that unless we were in a position where we could not support remote learning we shouldn't be sending our kids to school. We normally leave for school at 830. Needless to say, it disrupted my day.

Home school today pretty much consisted of finding learning opportunities in whatever I wanted to do. We learned about categories, aka cleaned up the family room. Counted the dogs that walked past, aka spent time in the front yard so I could do some gardening. Created a story and scene, aka played with the Barbies in the garden to make it like they were camping so I could continue gardening.

So home school yeah, I think I would put it in that category of something that I *could* do but would prefer not to. Because on the whole, it's kind of stressing me out a bit.

It's not the learning bit I feel anxious about. Creating learning opportunities for a six year old is pretty easy - let them play and explore. It's the scheduling of everything else that's stressing me out. Reporting back to the school teacher on what we've been doing. Figuring out when I get to do stuff that I need to do. It's very distracting mentally, which isn't very helpful when your work is writing up your thesis.

I know things will settle and we'll figure out a new routine, but its going to take a while to get there. And its going to be an exhausting journey. My productivity in other aspects of my life is going to take a hit and I need to accept that. Because at the moment I really don't think my brain can cope with worrying about it. I just have to get on with the reality that I'm in at this moment, see where it goes, and trust that it'll all figure itself out eventually.