School started again in August. I don't think anyone was excited about doing school at home, but I knew that if the kids were still doing zoom meetings in the fall that we would fully home school. I never thought I would do home schooling, but I knew it was the right thing to do right now. School has been so unpredictable and so many restrictions with a possible return to school. I wanted consistency and flexibility and control over what they were learning. I know the teachers did their best in the spring, but I don't think the kids learned very much.
Nathan and Jared stayed with the school zooms (11th and 9th grade); they're fully independent and responsible for showing up to their classes and doing their work. Owen (6th), Weston (4th), and Savannah (2nd) are doing school with Mom. It took a little while to work out a schedule and get a routine. We also had to rearrange the rooms a little bit. Nathan and Jared needed separate spaces, since their zooms are at the same time. Alex is still working from home as well, so he set up his office in our bedroom. Nathan is in his and Jared's room, and we moved Jared into Savannah's room. We moved all her toys and things out so she could play during the day. We have desks in the dining room for Owen, Weston, and Savannah. They rotate subjects so that I can help where needed and they can do the independent things on their own. We're using The Good and the Beautiful curriculum for Language Arts, handwriting, science, and history. We use CTC Math online, as well as Prodigy (which is a math game). They're also doing Typesy, a typing program. We do the full curriculum on Monday-Thursday and have a light day on Fridays (reading, journal writing, and scripture study). We added 20 minutes scripture study to the daily schedule; they do that before they start school. The scripture study has been good for me too, because I'm preparing study guides for them.
Once we got the routine down, it's been pretty stress free. No trying to hurry out the door in the morning or be on time to zoom meetings. We start whenever we're ready. The kids have also been running on MFW mornings, so the consistency is nice. Usually we start school around 9:30 or 10:00. They do 20 minutes of scripture study and then about an hour of school. After a 30 minute break, they do another hour. Lunch is 1.5 hours, followed by about 30-45 minutes of school. So they do about 2.5 to 3 hours M-Th, with no additional "homework" and done by 2:30 or so.
They have done pretty well. Savannah is ahead in her schoolwork. She went through a whole year of Language Arts in a semester, so she is ready to start the next level. Weston probably struggles the most, but I think he is doing okay. It's nice to have older brothers to help with math sometimes. Science has been a favorite, and we even watched some of the Nature series on Disney Plus sometimes, since we were talking about mammals.
