Yesterday was our orientation for online school for both children. Beforehand, I created new e-mail accounts that they could use to sync with their web browser and save all of the links they would need on the toolbar. I had a feeling the system would get overloaded with everyone trying first thing in the morning. I decided to wait until later in the morning and go through the orientation with my son. It went fairly well. He just kept getting bored with the tutorial videos and would walk off to play with his toys. We managed to finished within an hour, thankfully. With my daughter, I had to wait a little later as none of her orientation work was showing up. That evening she was able to complete it on her own.
I’ve set up our dining area as a school area when they don’t have to be at the computer to work. My son is in first grade and will have class 4 days a week at 3 hours a day on a video meeting. My daughter’s schedule only requires her to attend classes twice a week at 3 hours each day. This year will be different and definitely interesting. Neither of my children wanted to go to school due to the risk of Covid-19.We are very open with them about things going in the world. I have had discussions with them and they both felt safer and better about completing this school year at home. My son’s exact quote on the matter was, “Mommy, I’ll suffocate wearing a mask all day at school.” Once he said that, I knew he would not enjoy school like that. My daughter was wearing masks before all of this, so that wasn’t a change for her at all. Her stance on online school was that she would be glad to not have to deal with the big groups of people, which I definitely understand.
Hopefully, this school year will go by as smoothly as possible and maybe someday life will be normal again. Before all this started, I wasn’t feeling the greatest and just wanted a pause. I remember having a dream and wondering what it would take to just pause the world, pause life, for a short term. I just felt like I needed to catch my breath. I had no idea this, this virus, was going to happen and affect life this way.