Living Arrows 2021 – Week 2 – Mummascribbles

“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth” Kahlil Gibran.

Well it was the return to homeschooling this week, which I wasn’t much looking forward to (along with the rest of the Country). Luckily we had two inset days at the start of the week, so term for us started on Wednesday which was a nice gentle ease in of three days!

It wasn’t easy, but school have a good set up with all three pieces of work being available at 8am, which means we can do it as and when. I find that getting as much of the work done in the morning as possible is the best thing, because he is far less up for it in the afternoon, and it is nice for him to reap the rewards of an afternoon of fun rather than school work. It doesn’t always work that way – on one day I found myself still sitting there at 3.30pm, but most of the time, it is the best way.

Overall, he is currently playing ball with the need to get his schoolwork done and I am hoping it continues this way for as long as possible to make this whole thing far easier. We are in it for the long haul this time and I don’t want it to be a daily battle.

The trickiest part of home learning is what to do with Oscar. He isn’t at school yet and Zach needs quite a lot of assistance to get through his work (not in terms of being able to do it – he is more than capable, but just likes me there as motivation to get through it else his mind starts wandering and losing focus).

I had spent Sunday night printing out a bunch of stuff for Oscar to do alongside us, but I also signed up to the free trial of Reading Eggs and that has been his biggest focus. He loves the learning part and realising that he has started to put letters together and can read them as words, and he loves the challenge of getting a step further on the map each time. He is a very competitive person – even with himself it seems!

He has spent most days doing a little bit of this and a few worksheets with pencil grip skills and counting, and I won’t lie – a lot of time on the iPad/tablet!

A lot of me trying to get Zach to get his work done in the morning is so that Oscar has his buddy with him for the afternoon!

I still can’t quite believe that we are back to where we started with this whole pandemic, but I am glad that we have the ability to school at home so that Zach can continue with his education during this tricky time.