105 months

eLearning started off with two classes in 3rd grade, J was assigned a teacher that she would have her live calls with and get graded by but both of the teachers essentially taught the kids, they split up the work, her teacher mainly focused on the language arts and writing while the other mainly focused on the math. Our school really put time and thought into the eLearning platform and made it easy on us parents with not having the kids be on live with their class all day long! It was still hot outside so we started each day with PE class, we'd ride our 3 mile loop around the school, they would scooter around the dog park and sometimes we would be nice and let them do exercises/yoga inside the house, we always started out as a group which was nice for C and then would head to the respective house(s) based on what day it was.  

By the end of the second week the teachers were tweaking their lesson styles and putting out a weekly checklist for the kids to follow along with to keep track of their work, when tests were and what needed to be turned into be graded. The big girls when they were at our house claimed the dining room table for school, they watched many videos a day (and after arguing who would play what video mom assigned them the subjects that they would play going forward) and by the third week had assigned live calls with their teacher and their small reading group. For the most part the girls were self directed, there were times when we had to help them with math, and even a few times when I tried to help them until I was blue in the face and ended up texting the teacher to deal with them! Their teacher loved that I had reached out and within the hour the girls were on with her and were finally listening to what I had tried to tell them earlier in the day! They spent an hour working with their teacher, laughing, telling jokes and being silly, things they have missed since being home, it was nice for them to have the one-on-one time with her, they quickly grew to love their teacher and looked forward to when they got to "see" her.  

We had made a daily schedule that we tried to stick too so that they weren't constantly asking what they needed to do next, the girls learned to manage their own time very well and to tweak their own schedule based on "what they felt like doing" and not what the paper said it was time to do, this was a good lesson in time management and if there were graded on that they would get an "A"! While it was great that the girls were learning together we had to sometimes remind them that they could not "copy" each others work and could not always write about the same thing in reading/writing, they had to do as they would if they were in the classroom, which prompted me to split them apart when they took a test, they typically sat side by side so they could watch the videos together.

 

We stuck to our fun Friday afternoons which at the end of the week we all looked forward too! This month with BH's mom/dad they went to the beach to look for shells, no pictures of that and made homemade meatballs which we all got to enjoy later that evening for a family Italian dinner. At our house they painted butterflies, C's was opposite and they discovered they could put them together to make a whole, and painted personalized jack-o-lanterns with their names on them for Halloween. They also looked forward to just playing Barbies, singing, dancing and just being silly on a Friday afternoon.

The sister bond these two have has become that much stronger since we've all been home in March. They have always pooped together and slept together on the weekends, since March they  have slept together almost every night, I asked if they wanted to share a room in the new house and they said "no, we need our space". They love reading together and are pretty much reading the same books now, J is a little possessive of her books and now that C can read them too isn't sure how she feels about sharing them, thank goodness the school librarian is allowing the girls to come to school every few weeks to check out books, they are book worms and are always reading! I am not looking forward to when they are older and they share their "time of the month"!

Our Canes were back in action and we all looked forward to watching them on Saturdays, gave us something to look forward too and do. We did miss watching the games with our Canes friends, this is probably the first time in a few years where we won't have a picture of all the kids in their Canes gear, maybe I can photoshop one together! We celebrated Grandpa's quarantine birthday with a quiet dinner at our house, they girls thought it would be funny to use up all of their numbered candles and put them on his birthday pie, we used daddy's 40 too, made it a lot less candles!

 

Here are the pictures from the month.