A Lockdown update:

After a week in lockdown, I have some useful things to share with everyone.

Firstly the Schedule & School:

It has actually gone very well, the kids started “school” by doing school work during the “QUIET TIME” we are not increasing the amount of quiet time, so they are doing about 5 hours of school work (Monday – Thursday) and only 2 and half hours on Fridays and they have weekend.

what I think is interesting about this is that by giving them a schedule it has also provided us with a schedule, giving me and Husbae time to work but also time when we have to switch off and time when we need to exercise.

There loads of school resources available. I like to understand the big picture and I hate to waste time so I downloaded the WCDE curriculums for the relative grades and checked out term 2. We are using this as a basis to decide what the kids should do.

Some schools have provided better resources than others but there are excellent online resources and many organisations coming to the party. We use:
Khan Academy – www.khanacademy.com
Pick n Pay School Club – https://www.schoolclub.co.za
and my imagination🙂

The first thing I had them do was make up there own class schedules for their different subjects within the allocated quiet time. This has really helped them take ownership of their learning. It also made them realise that its not really a lot of learning time and that they shouldn’t be complaining.

Over the last week since school has started I realised that they really do want to learn things, they are soaking up so many things and we have to take responsibility to make sure that they soak up good things and keep their brains active so going back to school will not be a too much of a readjustment.

We have iterated the schedule a little bit to align more with how it has actually been going:

> The kids wake up later, and we let them sleep because its nice to have some adult only time in the morning.

Monday to Thursday
7:30 – 8:30: adults wake up, general hygiene, coffee, feed Kubo and put him in front of house
08:30 – 9:00: kids wake up, general hygiene and get dressed.
09:00 – 10:00 clean room, do chores and breakfast and say hello to Kubo and bring him back to garden.
10:00 – 12:30 quiet time – no screens, no noise, do something productive/work on project
12:30 – 13:30: make and eat lunch
13:30 – 16:00 : quiet time, with screens, no you tube, no noise, no tv, no games
16:00 – 17:00 : outdoor time, sports/exercise/Kubo 
17:30 – 18:30: Kubo front of house time/training time
17:00 – 22:I 00 : free time, Dinner
21:30 – 22:30 : quiet time, hygiene, bed time

> The doggo needs his own schedule😛 this was funny because he loves that we are all here all the time but he has so much energy and is struggling a bit with the lack of running around.

We also made a very simple cleaning schedule (we do this first thing when they are done with the daily chores):

Monday: Bathrooms
Tuesday: Lounge and Kitchen
Wednesday: Hallway and Study
Thursday: Bedrooms
Friday: Car
Saturday: Garden

The kids are doing great and being super helpful (under instruction). By the end of this they will know how to maintain a house – something I am sure they have never thought about before.

Managing myself has been a bit harder. Its really easy to become distracted by the kids, the house and meals (many, many meals) and then to not think about work or anything I should be doing. I am trying not to be too tough on myself, I am after all 36 weeks pregnant and there is an international pandemic going on but then there is all the guilt that comes with not being useful for society or productive for myself. Its a constant challenge, hopefully this week as the kids settle more into their class schedules I will have more space to work on my own productivity and mental state.

Good luck out there people, if you have any other tips, leave them below in the comments.