Emergency Short Term Home School

Let's Get Organized!   Photo Credit GoodHousekeeping.com  If you are like me, you have seen tons and tons of great resources flying through social media.  I personally swore off Facesnap and Instapic a while ago, but given the current climate I have begun embracing it again as a way to both collect and share information.  Its amazing how many resources are out there and being shared!   That being said, the problem with all of them, at least in the social media setting, is that they end up being scatter throughout your feed and can become difficult to find.  So, I have decided to start creating an organized list of online resources by topic.  The concept is simple.  Below you will find headings based on my schedule, (which I blogged about here , and made a video about below).  You will find if you click on any of these headings that you will be directed to a new page maintained here on this blog that lists all the resource...

Stick with the Basics Remember, this is likely a short term situation and your child is going to go back to school at some point.  Our purpose during this time in my opinion is to keep them learning and using their brains so they continue to develop.  So, stick to the basics.   Math wise, the basics would included some of the more obvious concepts that we all use everyday.  Obviously we want to spend time working with the four main operations, adding and subtracting, as well as multiplying and dividing. Depending upon the age of your children this might be all you need to worry about.   Beyond that, clear up to middle school aged students we see a need for things like working with fractions, percentages, and decimals.  Doing some work with integers (negative numbers) is also beneficial.  Money math, ratios, and basic geometry (perimeter and area) would all be good to consider.  As well as basic algebra if your children are old...

Never Forget: This Isn't Normal I start with that statement because I want everyone to realize as we start this that this time obviously isn't normal.  Don't fall into the trap of looking at the way things used to be done as your benchmark for what you should be trying to do at home..... "Regular School" is different for a pile of reasons I won't get into right now.... You don't have to make what you're doing at home look like regular school.  I saw a post of my facebook feed recently that pointed out that typical home school models don't allocate seven hours a day for educational time.  It's far too difficult to work into your daily routine, with such a small group its likely to get overwhelming, and bottom line, it isn't necessary.   With that in mind, I put together this simple schedule for our home school efforts.  We ran it last week and found that in general it works out pretty well. It is a general map, and we flow with it...

We are going to get through this!   Today is March 23rd, 2020.  America is in the grip of the Covid-19 outbreak and I believe that we will see the situation get worse before it gets better..... but I do believe without question that it will get better, and who knows, we just might come out the back side of this event better prepared to deal with these types of situations in the future.  My name is Zach and I am a father of two beautiful girls, and I  happen to also be a Middle School Teacher.  I have taught for over 15 years now, and spent some time teaching 3rd-4th grade and most of my career teaching a wide range of subjects to middle school aged children.  I have taught science, advanced math, literature, and career and technical education along with some health.  I also coach a wide range of sports, from middle school football to girls basketball and track and field. I have also coached tennis, volleyball, and boys basketball.  I ...