The kids have had their first two weeks of school. Katsu and I basically get into bed each night completely and totally exhausted. I don't even feel like I am doing much during the day but it is oh so tiring.
Here is the description of our first day from Facebook:
First day of virtual learning done and that was exhausting. And I still have to get my work done today! Andrew had 4 zooms this morning and was pretty self-sufficient except for the zoom with missing password. Now, he has lots of work to keep him occupied this afternoon and lots of disclosures for me to sign. Seth seemed to be mostly on-task. When asked what he did this summer, he said "torment his brothers because they deserved it". So, definitely getting off on the right track in 6th grade. He did have to be coaxed outside for recess instead of playing on the computer. Logan did a cool art project and had some microphone and filming issues and seemed to keep running out of time. And Noah started off with wanting to quit zooming after 30 minutes, but made it through the whole day. Trying to coordinate different recess and lunch times through the day is exhausting and that is before we add in speech and ELP later this week. Jack was relatively chill, but only naps in his carrier so spent a good 3-4 hours in the carrier while I attended to the kids and fussed if I had to bend. I did get in about 20 or 30 minutes of work, but I think most of my work will be once the kids are done with school. As nice as it is to spend more time with the kids, I can't wait till we can at least do hybrid.
The kids schedule is like this. Noah, Logan, and Seth each have periods of asynchronous work and synchronous work each day. They all start with a morning meeting. Noah then has some morning time with his class - calendar, spotlight a kid, things like that. Then, he has his math lesson together. Once they are done with that, I will help him work on his ST math - basically a penguin works them through math problems. He does 20 minutes of that and then he has lunch/recess. He doesn't need too much assistance anymore, but I think he does wish that I would sit on the side of the room, outside of the Zoom screen, for moral support. But that's kind of hard to do with Jack. He does participate, but does not really like doing Zooms and the work is all a little too easy for him. After lunch, he has language art time on a zoom all together and then he is done for the day on zooms. We will do his Lexia Core - his language arts app that practices phonics, reading comprehension, etc for 20 minutes. He needs help getting it started, but he can do it himself. He also has reading and then some more computer work that practices literacy, usually on Seesaw that he needs helps with. Then, he has specials - art, science, drama, PE, library. He needs help, particularly for library which is really not kid friendly at all. He has been a really good sport, but it's not very fun and, like I said, pretty easy work but not easily differentiable in this kind of format. His schedule is changing up tomorrow and I think they will do more group work, so maybe that will be more enjoyable.
Logan also starts with a morning meeting. Then, they have pre-filmed videos that they work through for Language Arts. They also do Lexia Core. Logan can pretty much go through on his own but occasionally needs help with some technology problems. Although apparently Logan has been teaching his classmates how to do technology stuff and sharing his screen on zoom. And one day when our internet was done, as soon as it was back on, he emailed his teacher of his own initiative and explained the problem. Then, his class has some group language art Zooms - I 'm not sure what they do and he doesn't want me to watch his Zooms. Then, he has some individual math work - I think videos again as well as ST Match. Then, lunch. Then, specials, science, etc. in the afternoon. His teacher is doing a read aloud - they are reading the Lemonade War, which Logan has already read. Logan's teacher has started to do small groups for math where they work on problems together. The good news is that there is no homework besides reading (for any of the kids) and school gets out an hour earlier.
Seth is mostly doing everything on his own, so I am only vaguely aware of schedule. His class seems to have a zoom on most of the time so they can ask questions if they need to. I know they are reading Maniac Magee and they will read it together in small groups. They have writing assignments using Utah compose that grades their essays each week and they also practice writing based on news articles in a Newsela program. They are learning US history this year. But I mostly know that Seth spends a lot of time chatting with his friends and trying to play video games with them during breaks. But at least he is attending and participating, which is somewhat more than some of the other kids are doing. They have an activity this year called College of Knowledge where they work on learning lots of information, doing lots of reading, lots of creative and science projects. Seth's goal is to get a doctorate, so he has a lot of work to do for that, so hopefully that will keep him busy. Both Logan and Seth have Speech for 20 minutes 2x a week. Seth also has ELP 2 days a week. He didn't participate in the Spring, but I am making him this time. He hates pull-out courses, but I think he will like it okay and it's good for him. Seth jets out of the house as soon as he is done with school so he can go play with his friends. So, he has 4 hours of play with friends each day, which is definitely more than he would have if he had regular school.
On Wednesdays, the boys are all asyncrhonous (although Logan does have a morning meeting). Logan and Noah both need some help on this day - Noah pretty much with everything. It's supposed to be 4 hours of work, but it's a little faster for Noah and a lot faster for Seth. It just depends on how well I can help depending on how Jack is doing.
So, I spend the day like this. Get the boys started. Take care of Jack. Put him in a baby carrier and then walk back and forth among the boys and make sure they don't need help and they are staying on task. Give them snacks. Put Jack down for a nap. Give Noah some more one-on-one help. Do work on my work. Feed Jack. Pick up lunch at the school for the kids. Make other lunches because they don't want the school lunch. Help Noah with asynchronous stuff. Help Logan. Nurse. Naps. Work. Get kids outside. Make sure kids aren't doing prodigy. Etc.
Andrew works on his work completely on his own. I finally checked on him and there were a couple missing assignments, but I assumed so. It's confusing because he only has zooms for his class either M/Th (morning classes) or T/Fr (afternoon classes), but he has assignments for all his classes every day. For math class, he was having upwards of 4 assignments per day. And if you forget to check off some of the assignments, you are counted as not being there. So, there were a couple of absences, too. It's a lot, but Andrew is doing well. He has 9th grade math, his MELP classes for language arts and history and science, plus PE, Chinese 2, and Psychology. He read "Stamped" for history this week and "To Kill a Mockingbird" for Language Arts. They are focusing on physics for science class. He has a lot of his friends in his classes, so that helps a bit. They had a back to school night on Zoom for the middle school. His first teacher never started his zoom meeting (well, apparently he did after 11 minutes, but at that point, we weren't watching anymore). But we did get to talk to the other teachers. It sounds like his classes are having around 100% participation though so that is pretty good.
In other news, Katsu made a celebratory sushi dinner on Monday. Noah starting itching like crazy and we discovered hives over half of his body. We gave him benadryl and called the doctor. They told us to call 911, but I thought that was excessive, so Katsu took him to the ER at primary children's instead. They treated it quite seriously with an epipen, steroids in an IV, more benadryl, oxygen, etc. He never had any oral or breathing symptoms so I wasn't too concerned, but am glad that they treated him well. Noah was a real sport, even with a shot and with an IV. Once the epipen wore off, the hives came right back. They went away with benadryl but they wanted to keep Noah to watch him through the night. In the morning, he got to eat a yummy breakfast with bacon (he still likes to talk about it) and then they released him. He still had hives for most of the rest of the day. We had a follow up with our doctor and then an appointment with an allergist. He will have allergy testing this week and we'll see if we can figure out what he is allergic to. We have a couple epipens now, but we have to remember to bring them with us all the time.
A week ago, we had Jack's baby blessing. We did the blessing at Grandma Clo's house with the whole family (Elmers, Karen, & Corey's family). We had to zoom with our bishop and so we also invited my parents, Katsu's dad, and our siblings (Kiyo & Sarah & fam were there). It was really nice to be able to have people watching from all over the world. We found Jack a cute white outfit that he was able to wear and he was pretty fussy beforehand, but he calmed down during the blessing, thankfully. Katsu blessed him and Andrew Elmer, Lee Elmer, and Corey Crookston were all able to participate in the circles. The blessing was good - he would have compassion, get along with his brothers who would show him how to be kind, he would be able to enjoy the things that life offers, he would be able to put himself in others shoes and help them. We had cake and ice cream and also celebrated Katie's birthday.
This past weekend, we went to apple picking at Burgesses in Alpine and then drove the Alpine loop. It felt like a long time ago since we had apple picked (though I guess we did in Capitol Reef) and it was fun. Jack wasn't too impressed. What the boys really loved though was the peach ice cream and the apple cider slushes that we got afterwards. Then, we drove the Alpine Loop. We were doing pretty well, but then once we got near the top, Jack started crying hysterically. I think the altitude must have bothered him. So, I think that is going to rule out going to Bryce Canyon anytime soon. But it was beautiful. We were able to get out in one place, but no time or place to pull over for hiking - this time anyways. Afterwards, we met up with our friends the Garcias from Michigan (they live in Arizona right now). We went to Hatch Family Chocolate and got some ice cream and chocolates and had a nice time (well, except for the kids constant interruptions) visiting with them.
The Saturday before, we also went to Seth's soccer game - everyone besides Andrew. Oh, right - because Andrew got a bad bee sting on his foot and couldn't put on shoes. (He got these horrible blisters all over his foot - it was a pretty bad infection). Seth also got some bad bee stings and fell off the trampoline (that was the same day as Noah's visit to the ER). It's been so crazy. The air has been pretty smokey many days - either from California or from fires here in Utah.
... And I think that was most of our 2 weeks. So busy. Plus seth's soccer. Plus Katsu riding his bike to work and starting to go into work most days of the week.
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