camera on, everything went to black
screen. He restarted the computer at least
five times and logged out of/back into
Zoom at least eight times. I called the
school for technical support, but they were
unable to help. Eventually, the problem
self-corrected. WEDNESDAY: Breakout rooms were
interesting. I watched my son staring
at four other children, not one of them
willing to be the first to speak. I emailed
the teacher letting her know that they
needed guidance in these breakout rooms
as the students aren’t certain what is
expected of them. We had the black screen
issue again, but it self-corrected an hour
into the morning. Otherwise, the technical
issues had calmed down and it was a
generally better day.

THURSDAY: The teacher is getting better
acclimated, and things seem to be calming
down. Unfortunately, one student was
crying and, without knowing how to use
Zoom in gallery view, the teacher didn’t
see the upset child. I texted the mom that
he might need help in order to de-escalate
the situation. I suspect that the teacher
does not have two screens, one with Zoom
in gallery view and the other to share her
screen. FRIDAY: Ilan got kicked out of Zoom and
couldn’t get back in without the teacher
letting him in. I had to text another mom
to have her daughter let the teacher know
that he was stuck in Zoom purgatory. She
eventually let him in and the rest of the
day went fairly smoothly.

Any final thoughts? There are a lot of
growing pains associated with virtual
learning. First graders are not designed
to sit down for a full school day nor
should they be expected to know how
to maneuver a Chromebook or laptop.

These are also extremely trying times
for teachers as they are working on
commanding a class of 20+ young children
who are expected to pop in and out of
different Zooms. Every day is better than
the day before, and I think we will have
kids who finish the year knowing more
than when they started, but it might not
be quite the same quantity as in-person
learning. n
HOME SCHOOLING
Name: Sheena Girty
Town: Hanover, MD
Children: Eli, 10; Shiloh, 8; Trinity, 4; and
Asher, 2
Children’s Grades: Fifth, third, pre-K and
preschool How are you doing school this fall? We are
doing full home school using the Sonlight
curriculum exclusively. Our curriculum is
literature heavy and everything is done in
books. We don’t use devices at all for school
unless we are looking up more information
about a field of learning or taking virtual tours.

We are currently doing the following
subjects daily: Bible, history, geography,
math, science, language arts and reading.

In October, we will begin learning Spanish.

Throughout the week we make sure to do art,
P.E. and music, as well. With our curriculum
you can choose between a four- or five- day
school week. We chose the four-day schedule,
and I’m so glad we did. We have one day
open for extracurricular activities, field trips,
co-ops or whatever we decide to do.

graders. When they’re set up on something
they can do independently, I do circle time
with the little ones. We go over our alphabet,
numbers, days of the week, months of
the year, shapes and colors. Then we do a
coloring activity and read a book.

WEDNESDAY: Wednesdays are identical
to Tuesdays. We get to work, do what we
need to do and get done. Wednesday is
usually when we do our more “involved” art
projects. We study and make sure we have
our weekly math concept and spelling words
down because tomorrow we will have tests
on those. Any spelling words that are missed
are added to the following week’s list, and if
the math concept wasn’t fully understood,
we don’t move on until it is.

THURSDAY: It’s test day! It’s also our last
full day of school, and it’s our shortest day.

MONDAY: Mondays are always filled with a
bit of excitement and a bit of drag. We start
our day at 8 a.m. and we end around 2 p.m.

On Mondays we are introduced to our new
concepts that we will be learning for the week
in each subject. We get our spelling words, our
new geography song and our new Bible verse.

FRIDAY: We have been doing outdoor field
trips on Friday. We went to the National
Zoo to see some of the animals we had
learned about in science. We are hoping
the Smithsonian will open up eventually
so that we can explore those too. We just
finished ancient Egypt and wrapped up
study with King Tut. It would have been
nice to go and see what the museums have
on ancient Egypt, but we made due with
YouTube videos and virtual tours of the Giza
pyramids. TUESDAY: The kids know the flow. They
rise, dress, clean their rooms and head
downstairs for Bible time and breakfast. We
recite our memory verse for the week and
get into our Bible reading. During breakfast,
we strategize for the rest of week, then we
head to the basement for school. We do all
the remaining subjects down here. Most of
the “teaching” I do is for my fifth and third
Any final thoughts? Although we feel like
we were forced into this position, home
schooling is what it is best for our family,
and we are thankful we are able to do
it. We like that we don’t have to have a
Wi-Fi connection to do school, plus our
curriculum is only 36 weeks long. We
actually are at the beach for a week, and we
will be doing school in our down time. n
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