How are you approaching homelearning this time?

[museumum]

Mainly I'm interested in those working from home and homelearning primary age children...

what's your plan?

I'm supposed to be back at work on Wed 6th. Think I'll have to take that day off, DH has offered to take Friday 8th off.
Week beg. 11th I've got some BIG meetings Wed and Thur which need lots of prep and my undivided attention but I'm thinking about taking days off around them . Or maybe working evenings again like lockdown 1.

I JUST. CAN'T. do my job and supervise homelearning at the same time. My work ends up shit and needing re-done and my children get neglected, they're not able to work in 'exam conditions' at their age, they need help when they need it, not two hours later.

At this moment in time it looks as if I will be in school covering classes for key worker/ vulnerable children and providing online work. I can’t do both of those well at the same time as was proven last time when my days teaching in the hub meant I couldn’t be online to respond quickly too. Like the rest of you I will have my own primary school aged child to support. I guess it’ll be weekends for her work again.

I'll wfh in the morning and go to the office in the afternoon. Luckily DP wfh anyway.

I won't homeschool at all because the arguments aren't worth it. DS, aged 10, can entertain himself as he sees fit.

@Arkadia

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/covid-19-government-sticking-to-plan-for-schools-to-return-from-next-week-michael-gove-tells-sky-news-12174034

I honestly don't see how it's possible for working parents to achieve all that is expected of them. Those who did it during the first lockdown know how hard it is to work at home whilst the kids aren't in school, and home learning on top pushes it from 'barely manageable' to 'can't cope'. Those who work outside the home aren't even with their kids to facilitate home learning, even if they could.
If you still have a job asking for time off may make your position even more precarious.
I think people should do what they can, but it's about priorities. As long as your kids are safe and looked after, and you can keep a roof over your heads then that's what matters. Don't bust yourself to do a full day of home learning on top of work and everything else if it will send you over the edge.

I am so angry that the Governments (UK and devolved) has managed this so badly that we seem to have gone back to square one.

Just praying they keep primary schools open and that the secondary school testing works....somehow. We had no cases in our school last term at all and parents are being kept very strictly out, which is clearly working well. I have no concerns about them returning so really hoping they're allowed to do so.

Oh sorry this is scotsnet! Oops! Hi from the south.

Same routine as last time.
Get up as early as I can stand. Ban kids from the living room and work till midday.
Lunch
Session on Reading Eggs for DD(5)
Session on Night Zookeeper for DS (8)
One after the other. Heavily supervised with the other kid bribed with my phone to go away.
School work if it's relevant and interesting (More likely for DD. Unlikely for DS who needs a lot of downward differentiation.)
Bit of "yard time" in the back court for exerise.
DDs mental health seems to depend on me playing bloody Barbies with her at some point so I guess I should make time for that.
Bit of housework
Teatime and bed.

It sounds crap but DS actully made a lot of progress last time just because he was doing work at the correct level, had one to one attention and was in a quiet room.
He has possible ASD and/or ADHD and school is not working out for him :(

I'm furloughed (again) so I theoretically have the time for full-time homeschooling.

Pressed send too soon.

But I won't do it. We'll do a couple of hours: as long as they do a bit of writing, maths, and reading that's enough. They don't want me as a teacher and that's fair.

We won't.

We're both working from home and our son is only in P1. He's good with letters and maths so as long as he's not behind we are not making it any harder than it needs to be. He has to entertain himself or simply be put in front of a screen for a few hours while we both work.
I'm going to let him enjoy the time we don't have to work

@unlimiteddilutingjuice we discovered a barbie thing that kept DD entertained for ages last lockdown.

Making barbie clothes out of balloons!

Just buy as many different shapes and sizes as you can find in the supermarket, look up some instruction videos on YouTube and sit her down with a pair of scissors.

DD loved it, she was 5 (turned 6 in May)

Thanks FatGirlShrinking She will actually love that!

The ability of us to home school successfully while both trying to carry out our incredibly stressful jobs depends entirely on whether the Education Department of the Council encourages teachers to provide some sort of online learning. Unfortunately Edinburgh council banned teachers from doing so last time even if they wanted to. So the school handed out a few worksheets supposedly to last the week but were completed in under 30 mins, leaving the rest of the week for us to try to find some resources to teach them something. Edinburgh education department must surely be the very worst in all of Scotland.

Elvesaremagic It's interesting you feel that way.
I'm actually dreading online schooling a bit.
I feel like it will be harder for me to facilitate them being online at a particular time.
I'd prefer to have worksheets I can help them with as and when.

But there was no help with the worksheets. And - I kid you not! - when kids got stuck on the maths they were told by the teachers just to skip those bits. I assume that was because teachers couldn’t actually teach via video as they were not allowed, to and the concept was too complicated to explain via any other means.

Oh yeah, we didn't even get marking.
Plus my son is behind and nothing was differentiated for him. So it was worse than useless really because it was actively dispiriting.
In the end we just did Reading Eggs and Outschool.
I used to send an email once every two weeks just with general chat to let them know we were still alive.
In case...I don't know.... they had safeguarding concerns they'd never mentioned to me or something?
I actually don't know why I did that. It sounds ridiculous now I write it down. It seemed like the right kind of thing to do at the time.
Then I sat silently through all the hand wringing at the PTA about the irresponsible parents who "didn't engage".
I'm actually at the point where I'd rather not be given things to engage with. It's somehow both pressurising and inadequate.

Pressurizing and inadequate perfectly sums up the whole shit show that is homeschooling.

I've been trying not to think about it but the English news has brought it to the fore.

Glad that the majority of primary schools in England are openings Monday - hopefully that'll put some pressure on the SG not to prolong the primary closures.

I do think secondaries are another tier (ha!) of risk though sadly.

Does anyone have any insider knowledge of how long primary closures are likely to last? A week - I'll just take extra leave, more than that I really don't know.

Lucky that I can WFH (full time in a very technical role ) I guess but I know very few from last time that one of the parents was either furloughed or very part time and every single one said that even they found it hard.

I'm not going to stress about school work. It was an utter joke what was provided last time, so it can only be an improvement.

I'm afraid I have no insider knowledge.
Teachers are in the same boat as everyone else and even the politicians are looking at what's happening on a daily basis. People who were infected at Christmas are now at their most infectious so it depends what people are doing- if they're mixing or not.

I was also very encouraged by Gavin Williamson's announcements yesterday, and by research into the new variant that was released today showing that primary school children are unlikely to be infected. It seems the delay to secondaries opening full time is less because of increased infection rates in that age group, and more because they want to put mass testing in place to minimise disruption against a background of high infection (frequent absences are very disruptive). I didn't see mention of nurseries, but if primaries are open I'd be amazed if they are shut.

So it looks as though the latest science backs up what the Scottish government say in their own documentation (that they don't believe young children drive spread) and makes the blanket closures seem even more draconian and over the top. It's only a 'better safe than sorry' situation if there is little to no downside to the action, and we know the harms of these closures are massive on many fronts, so surely their position will start to look less and less tenable.