Class is in Session
With the new “shelter in place” order sent down by our Governor, tons of parents are having to take on the role of homeschooling their kids. The meme and gif games are strong during these times and I think a lot of parents are going to come out of this with a deeper appreciation for teachers. I’ve always appreciated and understood the amount of work that teachers put into their job as my mum has been teaching for decades and has completed surrounded her life around her students/work.
Waylin is not of the age of intense lesson plans or anything, but that doesn’t mean we can’t exercise her brain. I mean, we all know our kids are getting HELLA screen time, especially on cold, rainy days. But, the only way to survive is to do 384 activities a day, so you might as well have fun with them!
Our first class of quarantine HAD to be PE Class. There is no way we were going to survive cooped up inside the house. Turns out, I would have made a really good PE teacher! We had a bout of really nice weather…emphasis on the word “bout” because this is Illinois and you can never count on it lasting long.
P.E. CLASS
Topics Covered: Soccer, Testing for American Ninja Warrior, and Working off the “Quarantine-15” I have been gaining.
I know parents are typically overly impressed by their kids, like when they make an accidental squiggly line and they call them an artist. 🎨 Okay, okay. I’ve done that. 😄 But, I am genuinely impressed with her soccer skills! She could actually kick the soccer ball consistently one after another while running. That takes some coordination that I’m not sure most 2 year olds have yet. And she’s got long legs, so I imagine that would make it harder for her to coordinate!
I also took a piece of chalk and made a makeshift Ninja Warrior maze for her to follow. She “walked the tight rope” and jumped over a sea of tigers ya’ll. Why tigers are in the sea, I do not know, but SHE DID IT! 👏
P.E. Class keeps me sane and helps her take a nap after lunch, so I am making us honor roll students in this class.
ART CLASS
Topics Covered: Multi-media artwork, sculptures, ALL OF THE CHALK (literally ALL of it), house painting, and surprisingly, tattooing.
We have spent a lot of days with chalk imprints on our clothes because this girl LOVES to draw with chalk. One of her favorite things to draw is pizza! She loves to mark and say what toppings she is including. She knows our favorite pizza has: extra sauce, pepperonis, green peppers, mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes. 🍕
Waylin sits at her table right behind my desk and uses all kinds of multimedia to create art and sculptures using playdoh. We have crayons from Ben’s C-H-I-L-D-H-O-O-D ya’ll…HIS CHILDHOOD! 🤣 I have been laughing so hard ever since he showed them to me when we moved into our house. He finds nothing strange about still having crayons in perfect condition from his childhood. #wereyouallowedtocolor? 😂 I certainly don’t have any of my crayons. I scribbled and doodled until those things were nubs!
We also have colored pencils and markers. I have recently learned that our homeschool included a self-taught course on tattooing. 💪
It was the classic tale of looking away for less than 2 minutes to find a proud little girl showing off what she did with a box of markers. The video is my reaction when I just noticed what she did. Ben’s reaction? Not as happy…not even close! 😃 Needless to say, we ended up having a bubble bath in the middle of the day, and she’s been obsessed ever since! I had to have a talk with her about how we only draw on paper, and every time you accidentally color on yourself, we cannot go take a full blown bubble bath. 🛁
Ben installed a rolling barn door in the master bedroom, and quarantine is forcing us to finish some of our projects. We finally stained our barn wood door a pretty blued charcoal in the garage. In case you were wondering, yes, the trip to Menards to choose a stain color took over 3 hours. 💀 Waylin got to help paint a little bit. We have a couple of painters unions interested in hiring her as a contractor next week. 💰
When I was a freshmen in high school, I had to take an art class with a teacher named Ms. Batman. 🦇 Yeah, really. But, she wasn’t as cool as her name. I actually tried in her class and she still gave me a C on most of my projects. So, while I may be average according to my old art teacher, I think Waylin deserves an A for creativity and resourcefulness.
EARTH SCIENCE CLASS
Topics Covered: The scientific correlation between fish and hot dogs, what berries you cannot eat, and how long a nature walk really is.
I’m no country girl, and I have never alluding to being one. I did grow up fishing, but I never had brothers to show me how to properly fish. Still, I loved going out in the canoe or fishing off the bank in the backyard at my mum’s house. And when I got older, I had boyfriends who would bait my hook for me. But, I think every fisherman would tell you that they have fished with hot dogs before. It’s easy, available bait…and girl-friendly. 🌭
Waylin and I would go sit on the dock and feed the fish. It was hilarious to her when they would jump out of the water and “scare” us!
And FYI, I can bait crickets (preferably dead ones) now, but I still squirm about baiting worms. * I just had a level 10 shiver thinking about it *
Waylin’s “class” is fortunate to be able to take short field trips to learn about nature during the day. No permission slips needed. 😉 While a nature walk implies that we walk, Waylin decided she wanted to take her truck down to another portion of the lake in our neighborhood. I loved how she decided to “park” her truck in the common area! I had to convince her that it would be fine unlocked.#towniementality
We found some weird yellow berries that really interested Waylin. I’m not sure what they were…and honestly, I didn’t have my glasses on, so it’s very possible that it wasn’t a berry! But, we quickly googled the berry rhyme: White, Just Right. Red? You’re Dead.” So, there’s that important lesson! 😃
We got to see a deceivingly cute little family of cobra chickens—I mean Canadian geese. 😂 Oh, and there’s a baby squirrel that keeps coming up to our patio and eats dead bugs in front of our window. It’s pretty exciting, and it takes a lot of restraint for me not to leave some food out for him. I won’t…umm, maybe just some—no no no. I won’t. Ben wouldn’t like that. 😆
Per our class rubric, Waylin has excelled in this course and she is at the top of her class!
DRIVER’S EDUCATION
Topics Covered: “Parking lot” donuts, things not to do while driving, driving on two-wheels, and a hybrid course in theatre and driving.
Quickly in the first few days of quarantine, I realized two things:
I need to consolidate her toys (consolidate meaning GET RID OF THEM FOREVER - there are too many.)
She needs new toys. 😂
I placed my first Amazon order since quarantine started and made sure to include “busy toys.” I found a remote control car that was cheap and it had an easier remote than the one she got for Christmas. I’m sure Ben wasn’t thrilled about the amount of times that car hit our trim, so I bought a car that looked more age appropriate,
That car is AMAZING! We actually started doing tricks with it, like this:
Haha, “doing donuts” was/is probably my favorite thing to do when I drove something worthy. And that’s definitely one of Ben’s hobbies growing up too. She loves cars so much. I wonder if she will grow up to be a gear head.
And due to unforeseen circumstances, she also got to sign up for a hybrid course knocking out credit hours for drivers ed and theatre…apparently. Before “the bell rang” for us to head outside for recess, Waylin grabbed her old Halloween costume from two years ago and was persistent in wanting to wear certain pieces from it. I think we are getting closer and closer to that part of childhood where she wants to start picking out what she wears. In fact, there are a lot of days during this quarantine where she is wearing 3+ dresses a day…and according to her, it is necessary.
I imagine with everyone having to be sheltered in place, we probably got a couple of stares from our neighbors to see a goofy, purple dinosaur rollin’ down the road. I kind of realized in that moment that I am a true “roll with it” kind of parent. 🤷♀️ As long as she’s safe and happy, I’m cool with it.
Buuuuut speaking of “being safe”…😄 We took this photo because, we heard rappers do this on cars and wanted to see what the hype was. LOL, she loved it. Honestly, her legs were getting tired from “Fred Flintstoning it” all the way down to the Sangamon River entrance of our neighborhood.
Aaaaand if that wasn’t enough, we decided to ditch two of those wheels with the help of Lindsay when she stopped over to social distance with us in the driveway. In case you can’t tell, my SIL is a total badass chic…even without the bike! ❤
In an effort to contain any hereditary road rage, I will refrain from grading her performance as we did have a couple of safety violations. 😅
COOKING CLASS
Topics Covered: Good eats…plain and simple.
I would say my love for cooking has increased every year since I dabbled in bodybuilding when I was 26. It is really exciting to add new dishes into your normal rotation, especially when the family loves them! Ya;ll have definitely heard me brag about my chicken skills, because it’s literally the thing I am most proud about. I can make some damn good chicken.
I hope to raise Waylin so that she wants to make things that her mama made her growing up. Ben’s mom gave him a cookbook when he first moved out on his own and it had a bunch of her staples and favorite recipes that she always makes in there. I thought that was an amazing gift! I hope I can add enough to my list to do that for Waylin one day.
We made blueberry bread and cheesy biscuits after a day full of “classes.” :)
I still need to perfect my ratios on the blueberry bread, but will hopefully post the recipe here one day. And the cheesy biscuit recipe? You can read it on the back of the Red Lobster Cheesy Biscuit Mix Box…#noshame 👩🍳
She is the BEST big helper. In fact, she just started calling herself “good helper” whenever she helps me with something. One other thing that I have noticed differently since quarantining, she has become a much better eater. I was getting reports from her daycares that she barely eats anything and if she does, it’s whatever serving of fruit they have for the day. She isn’t super adventurous, but she has tried more things than I can remember, and we’ve had quite a few dinners where I don’t have to make her a special plate. I feel really good about that!
She gets 5 Michelin stars for her cooking class attendance!
THE NITTY GRITTY SCHOOL WORK
Topics Covered: ACTUAL school.involving matching, counting, and science experiments about clouds 😂
I fully believe I have been able to provide Waylin with an amazing curriculum during this pandemic. It’s literally my saving grace to just have fun with it. I still manage to find ways to do actual education too, but to my surprise, one of Waylin’s daycares dropped off a bag full of activities that she normally would have received had she been going to “school".”
She was SOO excited to go get the package at the front door! So excited that she didn’t care if she could see where she was going! In fact, we did most of the lessons and activities in the first day! 😄 #whoops
The contents of the bag was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! I could tell that her teachers HAND CUT things out of construction paper…even tiny lightning bolts. I could FEEL the bruises on their hands just looking at them! The entire bag was packaged by activity and there were instructions on how to use every piece and what the lessons were based around, which happened to be a theme for Easter and April showers!
She got a 10 out 10 on all of her matching activities. There were more art projects in which we designed an umbrella and built our own storm scene to learn where lightning bolts and raindrops originate from.
AND! They also included all the materials to do science experiments. I think it is so, so cool they do science activities at daycare. Some of the packaged experiments included making our own rain cloud, learning how rain falls through a cloud with food dye, and even a rainstick!
Look at how genuinely interested and happy she is doing these experiments! Ever since, she tells me about the clouds, raindrops, and lightning and thunder. 🔬 You go, science girl!
It is with great pride that I inform you that Waylin has made the Dean’s List for the incredible work she has done this “semester.”
Keep it up, girl! School is #1!
