Deschooling Week Four
As you can imagine, things have gotten real weird around here, real quick. The entire state, country, world (?) is on lock down because we’re having a pandemic. We cancelled our Spring Break trip to Oklahoma, and have been laying low instead. Honestly, our day to day lifestyle has not changed much. We are missing our field trip Sundays out of the house, but since we were already working and learning from home, nothing much has changed there.
I’ve been asked if we are still doing Spring Break, and taking a break from our studies. That’s a difficult question to answer, since right now we are not using curriculum, but it does still feel like we’re on a bit of a break. All learning has not stopped; there are some things that Cash naturally does every day like listen to audio books and watch educational Youtube videos. He’s helping me with the garden, and yesterday, he watched Master Chef Junior most of the day and ended up cooking most of our dinner including dessert, by himself. He swam for about 7 hours on Saturday at the neighbor’s house. He’s also learning a lot more about Minecraft every day, and since I’m working to not categorize life as “educational” or not, we’ll count it. He’s certainly having to read and type and learn a lot more about computers, which are really useful skills. He’s also decided he wants to take on a 24 hour challenge of living out of a cardboard box (inside the house), so that should be interesting. Lots of playing still going on around here.
The main reason why we’ve been doing less intentional learning is more of a practical one than anything. My job is one of those that has increased in demand due to the outbreak, and I’m currently working 10-12 hours every day. We are working to get more help so that we don’t burn out, but the simple fact is that everyone in my company has been working overtime for the last week. Cash has been incredible through all of it. I think he’s enjoying being home and not having any outside obligations. He’s also stepped up to help me a lot, and I’m very proud of him.
I have no idea what the new normal is going to look like. I assume my work will settle into a more comfortable routine soon. I don’t have any idea how long we’ll be encouraged (or soon maybe even forced) to stay home. I bought a hammock and a small pool this week, so we can spend more time outside. We have a very big yard to play in. We have a basketball goal, soccer goals, and bikes. We have lots of books and games. I think we’re ready for what comes. In the meantime, we’ll be scooping up all of the extra free resources being offered right now to kids out of school, and enjoy hanging out with each other!