Homeschooling going to shit - a support thread

[Brokenchair1]

Schoolmum WhatsApp group rapidly filling with messages about people doing the Joe Wicks live PE, photos of kids sitting at desks dressed and working, mum's joking about how lovely it is to home school.

Meanwhile in the broken household....single mum here, I have a Skype meeting at 1 I need to prep for, DD 7 currently refusing to do anything and keeps sitting on me saying she wants to play. 3 months of this 😭

Anyone else where homeschooling isn't filled with colourful timetables and colour coded snack trays...join here for support and commiseration.

I think I have lost my mind.
Ds 1 and 2 will not stop arguing and fighting. Trying to teach them is nigh on impossible and I just want to grab the pencil and do it for them.

Me and dh are arguing as my work aren't being flexible and I need to work two days in the office. I feel like bursting in tears 😭

@Racheyg - .

I feel your pain - Am managing just by not trying to be teacher, full time job/working from home, and trying to get everyone to make the distinction that despite me being here physically, this is not the weekend.

Am just letting them coast for the moment... They will get bored, the novelty of being home will wear off and hopefully they will want to do some school work. Or not.

It’s going to complete and utter shit here.

We can’t log into DS school work so he hasn’t done anything academic really all day and I’m worried the school are going to get angry with me and he’s going to fall behind.

My youngest emptied his toys into the bath today and poured the entire contents of two and a half brand new big shower bottles over them to give them a bath, oh and squeezed out most of the tube of toothpaste as well onto my sink and toilet 🤬😤

The two youngest are eating me out of house and home and worse, taking single bites out of things, putting them in the fridge ‘to eat later’ and opening new stuff!

And yet, I am so anxious about the virus I dread them going to bed because while I’m running round after them I have no time to think about it all.
I get very anxious once they are in bed and it’s super quiet.

My 5 year old did no school work today, a quick attempt at her phonics books and she wouldn’t even focus on the words. The older one managed about an hour - can only hope tomorrow is better!

@frostedviolets I'm sure school won't be crossed. They appreciate that it's all uncharted waters for us and we are all trying to survive.

I'm trying to get perspective. If I don't work I don't get paid. If DD has 3 months of limited school work it is not the end of the world.

End of the day round up starting to trickle in from the WhatsApp mum's group. Oh we've managed 4 hours of literacy today blah blah blah. I'm going to pour some wine and watch The Chase!

I'm sat in the lounge looking at a bombsite. Tomorrow is a new day. I'm out at work all day Weds and DH is staying home (we've both been classed as keyworkers). I think this will drive him insane. He hates mess.

On the plus side, they've both vacuumed their rooms. This is a good time for them to acquire and improve their life skills!!!!

I have a 10 year old with ASD who insists on being spoon fed absolutely everything. His school have set a huge amount of work including stuff on google classroom which means they know what has been done. I have spent most of the day doing DS1's work for him.

I also have a 6 year old who refuses point blank to do anything. He has just thrown pencils around and screamed.

We did Joe Wicks at 9 am and have been on two bike rides, but they are both really unhappy and I feel like like a terrible, bad tempered, shouty old harridan.

I hope that things will improve soon.

I’m glad it’s not just me!

My DC’s teachers have sent mountains of suggested work via ClassDojo. My school age DC have managed about 1 page each, and then trashed the living room when I left the room for 5 minutes 🤯

Mine have been on devices all day and are now making a slide out of blankets on the stairs, someone is strumming a guitar.

In my defence I have just worked a night shift last night and was asleep today. Yesterday we did some cake baking before I went to work.

They need some wind down time as they have definitely picked up on the stress and worry of adults around them.

I think they will pick up concepts more rapidly at home due to increased 1:1 support, so I am not pushing it today.

Tomorrow we will do something structured on literacy/maths in the morning for about an hour and have some quiet reading time set aside in the afternoon. I am thinking of deciding as a family on a topic and try to cover science, ict, art, history, geography, languages, home economics, physical exercise etc... through a topic theme that interests them rather than just sticking to the curriculum. It is an opportunity for them to learn things they would not get to in school due to the restrictions of the curriculum.

Cheers to all of you with multiple primary school children or those with special needs - you deserve a medal for just surviving and not killing yourself or your darling the process!
Time for a well deserved drink - and stay off the class WhatsApp groups with the boasting mummies feeling they need to share their achievements every few minutes...

my dd is in Yr 10 this is the time she's dupposed to being taught her GCSE syllabuses. How on earth is she going to have a decent chance in her exams with me as her TA?
do yr7 being a total pita today.
Can they please repeat the year?

Dd14 skived PE

Fuck me, I have 4 school age DC and today nearly broke me. I need this thread.

I laugh-sobbed with relief at the "I make that 3 o'clock" post!

It has been a long day. Single parent, helping 2 other self-isolating households in the family with shopping etc, plus trying to work myself doing little things like payroll don't mention year end or I will have a nervous collapse. The two bits that didn't make my head ache today were:

• online PE (DC did this while I made a giant coffee)
• DC reading to grandma over a video call (2 wins there: I don't have to do it, and grandma rightly feels useful).

Rest of the day was monstrous. Roll on bedtime.

PE in our house was a scoot to the duck pond and back and then playing in the garden for a few hours: might as well make use of the nice weather!

I have 2 dc in different primary school years and who bicker over pretty much everything so I've been doing half an hour with one and then half an hour with the other and plenty of tea breaks in the middle!

We've done a fair bit but some of it has been active and hands on. In science dc 2 went in the garden to look for animals and plants in different microhabitats and then recorded the findings (not very much because everything is still hiding!) In history/art dc 1 researched Anglo-Saxon shields and designed one.

I'm not going to get them to do much in the way of writing because I refuse to turn it into a battle (and with dc 1 it absolutely would be). As long as they've got the basics and are doing some of their set work it's enough.

DD (12) just about managed 10 maths questions about decimals in half an hour with my full attention and encouragement. Read a couple of pages of the history book. Watched a couple of short history related videos on YouTube.

That was it. And that was better than we managed last week...

Ooooh I love the DC reading to someone on a video call. Now I just need to find a willing victim 😂

I have found my people. Have 7,6 and 4 year olds. The older two are actually OK. Trying to do anything with the 4 year old in tow is a complete fucking nightmare. Was seriously contemplating a glass of wine at 10am

NRTFT I saw one person at work has rejigged their week with Mon and Tues the new weekend for the kids, some HL Wed to Fri and then more focused HL Sat and Sun when parent can focus.
DD is 15 so doesn't need me there so much but maybe am idea for younger ones.

My son (9) is quite diligent and will get on with work, but getting my daughter (7) to do anything is like pulling teeth. It takes a huge amount of cajoling just to do one worksheet. I will have to try and think of some fun projects to do with her that are sort of educational.

6 and 3 year old dc lay on the sofa and watched me join in with Joe sodding Wicks.

4yo DS is all out of sorts though. Lots of tantrums. I think he's processing what's going on and I doubt he understands much of it. Must be quite scary and confusing for him. Doesn't help when we're in the middle of a tantrum and he's lashing out!

We also did PE with Joe this morning and to be honest it nearly killed me. We're switching back to Dance Star Party tomorrow! DD is happy to do it on her own, I sit on the sofa and sing the songs (as they're all 90s 00s) and DS just twirls around

A couple of useful things we've found:

• MathAntics on YouTube. It's American (hence Math not Maths) but they have great videos for explaining maths things like long division etc. It's good simply because it's not me explaining it.
• Google Home will play games. DS asked Google to play musical statues. Honestly it was brilliant and DS entertained himself for ages. No idea what else it does but am going to look it up.

DD's teacher is setting much more work each day, she's expecting 4 hours of work tomorrow including an hour of drawing. Everything has to be photographed and sent to her on whatsapp each day so can't just not bother. I expect tomorrow will be much more difficult.

I had DD start a quarantine diary - she wrote for today "Today was boring, I'm hungry"

Mummy wattsapp groups are all "oh how do teachers do this? Mummy needs more wine " 🙄

We've done a little of the stuff school sent home. I also let my children pick a topic, any topic, that they actually want to know about.
Ds1 picked the moon landings. We've started with the beginning of the space race (I want to spin this out) and he did really well!
So we'll he was very happy to tell DH later that Russia launched a satellite in 1957. It was called... um....
Septic.
Hey ho. Ds2 spent half an hour drawing a picture of a skull. He's 6 and wanted to learn about the human skeleton. So, skulls and septic satellites. Going well.so far.