Homeschooling, or not

There has been a lot of talk and stress floating around regarding home-schooling. Our kids are out of school for the foreseeable future, and there is a lot of pressure to find them things that will help them attain academic achievement. I love our community here in Belmont, but I feel that many parents are asking and expecting too much from our teachers. It doesn't look like there is going to be an online-school experience from our teachers and I think that's fine.

So what to do?

Our answer, at least so far, is to focus on the kids' emotional health and well-being and to just not worry about academic achievement. We are lucky to have a first-grader who is a voracious reader and a self-motivated learner. She's going to do fine with the resources we can provide. Our four-year-old is a little more of a challenge because he usually gets special help at school which can't be provided easily, but we think his speech-therapist will be available online soon.

I realize that things are more complicated for older kids, and those who may not be motivated to do self-directed learning. But with two parents on work-from-home it is basically impossible to offer any more.

We have found ourselves relaxing our usually-fairly-strict rules around screen time. I ended up buying a second used iPad for my son to use so both kids have one, they are both loaded-up with semi-educational content. I've set my daughter up with facebook messenger and some friends and cousins are messaging with her.

We'll see how I feel about this after a few more weeks, but for now this is mostly working.