Back to the Home School routine

So, Tom was supposed to go back to school on Monday, but with the government wanting every secondary school to do mass testing, they gave everyone an extra day off to give themselves time to set it up before 2 weeks of home schooling during which time everyone would be tested .  Then on Monday evening Boris announced that all schools were closing until at least February half term - so we are back to home schooling full-time - oh joy!

Anyway, we had Monday off.  Tom and I enjoyed a last long lie-in, leisurely breakfast and then had a nice day playing games, going for a walk, playing music and generally enjoying each other's company.

Then came Tuesday and straight into the stress of home schooling, oh joy!  First lesson was French, there was a video on the system.  It wouldn't play on Tom's computer.  It wouldn't play on Matt's computer.  Luckily there was actually a teacher responding to messages...it took an hour for him to put it up in a format where we could play it.  Great - so we were already an hour behind.  Next lesson was PD - we went round and round in circles trying to find which lesson to do.  Eventually found one dated 6th Jan so did that.  Then noticed messages from Tom's class mates saying they had done a different one!  The teacher (who is also Tom's form teacher) didn't respond to any messages, we still don't know if we have done the right one?  Next was History - we found a lesson, with a video.  The video was on youtube.  Youtube wouldn't work on Tom's new computer.  I don't have the school's system on my computer, so he emailed the link over, however, somehow he converted it to a jpeg so I couldn't use it.  He then had to read the link out but read it incorrectly so it took about 30 mins to get the link to work so he could watch it.    Then we had to print out a worksheet - Tom's computer wouldn't recognise either printer in the house.  So then he had to email me the worksheet and I had to print it out.  So we were now 2 hours behind the schedule!  Next was geography which was (luckily) well explained and easy to follow with no links / videos / print outs.  Phew.  Next was English which was an audio presentation from the head of Year 7 who is also an English teacher (not Tom's English teacher - but he seems to have lost most of his teachers now - as French and History was also run by teachers he didn't know!).  It worked and we understood what was needed and it wasn't too much.  Lastly he had Theatre Studies which once again used a youtube video so once again we went round the houses trying to view it.  By the end of the day we were both frazzled and we were two lessons behind.  We went for a walk around the village and then went back to it to try to catch up.

The rest of the week followed pretty much the same.  We managed to iron out some technical hiccups - found a lead to get the printers to work (why do you need a lead to connect a wireless printer to a laptop?!) installed a different browser which will play youtube videos and got to grips with Tom's computer (it is Windows but we are used to Apples, meaning we find it difficult to work out how to do some functions).  

Art was a classic.  It was a 1 hour lesson.  We had to watch a youtube video and then recreate what we saw.  We needed crayons and watercolours.  We have neither.  I had to call around some friends, find someone with some spare, go and collect them.  By the time I did that, the hour's lesson had been and gone.  We started it during PE - which we can get away with not doing.  It took us 2.5 hours.  When we finally finished it, we went back on the system to see lots of messages from pupils saying they didn't have the materials, and to find that the activity had been deleted!  WHAT!  So we did all that for nothing!  I made Tom take a photo and send it to his teacher - we certainly deserved brownie points for that!

We probably spent an extra 6 hours catching up on lessons that we either couldn't do in the time or couldn't do due to a technical hitch.  Why they can't do live lessons is beyond me.  Then the teacher manages the time and you view videos etc via the teacher not your computer.  AND you can ask questions of the teacher if you don't understand something and get some feedback.  Tom cried 3 days out of 4.  I felt like crying 4 days out of 4!  We got through it - just!  It wasn't a case of the school only having 12 hours to arrange the on-line learning, the plan had always been for Year 7 to do two weeks worth of home schooling on the return to school in January.  We will see how it pans out...

AND that is why we don't home school normally!  Oh, and I forgot to mention, I had a cake to get out and chocolates to make - just to add to the stress!  How people do it with multiple children is beyond me!

Tom the snow angel

Playing in the drifts

The weekend arrived.  Yay.  We had snow on the ground - double yay!  We have to walk from home at the moment, but that wasn't a problem, we decided to head up Fell Lane (the start of the Ingleborough path) and then headed across the fields on the Slaterber walk,  The snow had drifted here - it was really deep so Tom was very happy jumping around into the snow and making angels etc and throwing snowballs at me.  It was a really nice walk - very cold, but lovely and good to get some different scenery.  We saw quite a few people out on the Ingleborough track, apparently the police were out at Ribblehead trying to persuade people to go home.  

Covid rates here do seem very high at the moment, however, unusually we don't know anyone who has it at the moment - whilst all through Sept - Dec we were always aware and knew those who had it.  I think maybe the infections have moved away from the school populations to other cohorts who we don't know so well.  

Sunday was a horrible horrible day, plenty of rain, grey, miserable.  We went for a walk around the village in the rain and then cosied up on the sofas and watched 'From Russia with Love' - continuing Tom's James Bond education.  

Then we had teas on knees because Sumo has started again.  We have 2 weeks of teas on knees watching the big fellas colliding - a favourite thing to do in our house.

Our favourite tree