#TeacherMama in the Age of Coronavirus

I know that these past few days or weeks have been hard on all of us teachers. Like many of you, I am anxious about what happens next, worried about my own students and their access to basic services, unsure of how to explain all of this to my 6 year old and my 2 year old.

Also, because I literally cannot fathom how I can actually do remote learning for my 7th grade math students in a way that is at least a little bit equitable in a district that is not 1-1, I'm focusing on my own children instead, so allow me to transform my teacher blog to a space where I can share some of the fun I've had homeschooling during the pandemic.

Homeschooling M (Kindergarten)

M attends a Spanish Immersion Kindergarten. His school day is mostly in Spanish with maybe 1.5 hours of English reading instruction. He is bilingual but his other mom is the one who has always spoken to him in Spanish. I am not fluent, but because I don't direct a state wide non-profit trying to respond to a pandemic, most of the homeschooling falls on me.

Math: As you maybe guessed....I am having SO MUCH FUN teaching kindergarten math. So far we haven't been that impressed by school created resources (too easy) so we have been creating our own. Guys--the real tragedies are that I LEFT ALL OF MY MANIPULATIVES at school. I definitely already ordered more dice, ten frames, and base 10 blocks = ( Special thanks to Claire Verti @ClaireVerti for organizing a polygraph game that M and I played together.

English Reading and Writing AND Spanish Reading and Writing: We are basically doing similar activities, just sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in English. There is less sight word practice in Spanish and more emphasis on decoding syllables in Spanish...so we try to adjust accordingly. Here there is lots of reading to your little sister (she LOVES it) and we have been writing letters to our family and friends. This is the bulk of our practice each day. I am really grateful I bought this giant set of Scholastic Phonetic books in Spanish AND for RAZ Kids for early reading books in Spanish. We try to do half practice in English and half in Spanish every day. We actually have more books in Spanish.... We also use flashcards, card sorts, post it matching.

Theme Days:

OCEAN ADVENTURE: We used Raz Kids to look for books about fish or the ocean in Spanish and M read them. Then we went on a virtual field trip to the Georgia Aquarium -via live webcams on the exhibits. Then we did under-the-sea Cosmic Yoga and created Ocean Art.

VIDA EN EL ESTANQUE: We decided to do a day around this book M read us around life in the pond. We red the book together and then created pond art. M matched pond life words to pictures. Adira wanted her own matching game so I made one for her with shapes.

SPECIALS: We have done some super cool things. A digital art class with Mo Willems, FB Live event with the Cincinnati Zoo, making Rock Candy, Cooking Class (where we bake cookies and read recipes), play with kinetic sand, ANYTHING.

Homeschooling A (2 years old)

A is just two and isn't really even in a pre-school classroom yet, but she is along for the ride, so I've tried to find things that she can do while her brother and I work on schoolwork. We have worksheets where she traces lines and she plays with pipe cleaners. When M was matching post it words to pictures she wanted something to do so I created a post it shape matching activity that she loved. I made sight word flip flashcards for M so she wanted some. I made her some with shapes.