First Week of Virtual Homeschool

Presenting Bonnaire Academy 2020-2021 Grades: PreK1, PreK3, Kindergarten and 2nd grade! LOL

If you’re reading this, we finished up our first week of virtual homeschool and we survived. I know many of y’all will think, “didn’t y’all do this back in march up until may?” Yes and No. I’ll explain more shortly how its different and why virtual learning is more like homeschool. Also in this blog post I am going to share what went wrong and what we should’ve done differently. This may be helpful to other parents who are starting virtual/distant learning!!

Links to the kids outfits here: 

Sponsored by Walmart

We are beyond thankful for Walmart for having everything we need for back-to-school, even though we are looking cute for the living room. They have such cute and stylish outfits, that won’t break the bank. Now that September is creeping up on us, we are starting to transition the kids’ wardrobe for fall with warmer colors, boots, and light jackets (although we are in Florida and won’t need it until end of October). Make sure you check out Walmart for all of your back to school supply and fashion needs. 

Why their virtual school is more like “traditional” homeschool.

So our boys are not in front of a computer for 4-5 hours a day, like a lot of virtual school options for public schools. They are enrolled in there county’s virtual school program, and they provide an entire curriculum, with lessons, assignments, assessments, and hands on activities assigned by a teacher. However, everything is at their own pace and their teacher is there for additional help. My job as the parent is to be their learning coach. I am doing everything with Elias, and guiding RJ. However, 2 days a week on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings for 45 minutes, they meet with their teacher via zoom (along with the other classmates) and she does a small lesson with them.

I see their virtual learning more like homeschool because I am the one teaching them, the same as a parent who purchases a homeschool curriculum and does a lesson plan from that. Only difference is, we have a bit more aid (the teacher we meet with). We are also responsible for arts, music and P.E, and anything else extra we want our children involved in, like Spanish or technology.

I just couldn’t imagine having my kids sit in front of a computer for 4+ hours a day through zoom. It just doesn’t work for our family because we have so much going on (a 22 month old and a energetic 3 year old running around playing all the time), and sometimes homeschool doesn’t happen until 4pm when my husband gets off work, and can play with the younger two. I just didn’t like the restrictions with the actual virtual face-to-face zoom learning. It may work wonderfully for anther family, but just not for us.

Our 3 mistakes the first week of school, and what I wish we did differently:

#1: Not getting the ball rolling sooner: I was on top of things when it came to registration for Elias. I started the enrollment process in June so he would be squared away for August. Initially we thought we would be doing face-to-face (physical) school for the kids, but as Florida cases rose, we decided keeping them home was what was best for them. However, the only thing I was missing for Elias’ enrollment was his physical. He’s up to date on vaccinations, but he needed a physical to enter kindergarten. His birthday is in June, so he literally cannot go in for a physical until after his birthday. The soonest we could get them in was August. So with all that being said, his physical was turned in 2 weeks before school started but because it was after that initial cut off time, everything else was delayed.

He didn’t have a student ID number right away, and in his student email, which is associated with his student ID had his virtual school log in information. On his actual first day of class, we couldn’t even log in. We were not able to up until Wednesday! But if I were to have been more on top of things when it came to having him brought in for his physical this may not have been an issue.

So with all that being said, making sure your enrollment is 100% complete is my biggest piece of advice!

#2: Ensuring there are no log in issues: This kind of goes with #1, but make sure you are actually able to log in! Once you log in, start exploring their virtual learning internet space. So you can become familiar with is, so on the first day you aren’t wasting time trying to figure things out. I wasted a lot of time on Monday saying “wait, what?” “What is this?” “How do I do this?”. Obviously I figured it out, but It would’ve been very helpful to have had that all worked out beforehand.

#3: Not buying a printer: Another huge mistake. After we logged in and started going through assignments, I realized that they actually have real paper assignments, which I love because they have to use a pencil and paper to complete certain things. Whereas virtual school in march-may was ALL virtual, nothing had to be turned in on paper. Once I saw that we needed to print a lot of things, I realized we don’t have a printer and I do not feel like sending all of this to staples to be printed and making weekly trips there.

I then ventured to target to buy a printer, and there are none in stock. Like even the display ones were sold out lol. I went online to buy one, again all the decent price ones, are sold out. THIS IS LIKE THE TOILET PAPER PANDEMIC ISSUE all over again. Finally I found one for $99 and I ordered it immediately. Now I can bulk print everything for the upcoming week and be prepared for all their assignments!

But even though we had a few hiccups the first week, I’m thankful everything is at our own pace so I don’t feel that pressure that we are behind in anything-and regardless our kids will have an awesome school year.