First day ‘back’ at school.
It went ridiculously well.
The children started off with a class Zoom call, which is equivalent to herding cats, but the teacher managed it. The children were set work. Because it’s Montessori, and is a mixed age class (5-8 year olds), they are given the same core tasks, but depending on ability, the tasks get harder.
Master D was given the task of creating a picture of what he’d been up to during the school holidays, so naturally he drew a picture of himself and Pikachu rescuing a mummy and baby crocodile.
Miss E also had to do the same assignment, but also had to write about it. She did that in five seconds, and then got on with what she really wanted to do: composing a poem about Easter. Here it is.
EASTER
Easter is near
so do a dance
because the Easter bunny
is near.
And finally Easter is here
You walk past a bush
and you realise
an Easter Egg is there!
Brilliant stuff.
The children are surprisingly good about doing schoolwork, and only Master D complains. “I don’t want to do schoolwork!”, he whines, before settling down to actually do his schoolwork for 40 minutes with little input from me.
They had to do some printing, and we had a good look at the ‘virtual shelves’ created by their teacher, for ideas of what to explore next.
The Government has created a home school TV network, with some seriously great content and fantastic presenters. Suzy Cato, Karen O’Leary, Nathan Wallis. So cool. Despite saying it is on demand, it isn’t, only the live stream. Rev G works out a way to record it as most of the shows (covering a range of topics, like literacy, history, Te Reo Maori, art, P.E. etc) aimed at younger children are on during the time we do school work.
TVNZ, if you had shows of this calibre on during ‘normal times’, we might actually watch it!
After lunch the children have free play time, watch a bit of TV and run around on the trampoline like lunatics playing a new game with Rev G.
Rev G and I heave a sigh of relief that schooling went well.
In the evening I am dismayed to re-hurt my knee by the simple act of standing up from sitting on a chair. I guess the tendons are not as healed as I thought. I will have to take it easy again, which is so frustrating.