I checked in with my grandchildren at various times this week to find out if they were still participating in their online learning. Most of them are doing a bit on some level. Some of their learning has been expanded a bit. Lydia was learning about sewing, health care, and benevolence a couple of days this week. She was helping her mother to make cloth masks for local medical facilities. That is certainly something she wouldn't have learned in middle school in the past!
They've also had a bit of social time in a distancing sort of way. Harris had Facetime with one of his dear friends. Lillie and Lydia had Google Hangouts with some of their friends. Luci had a Hangout with me. I watched her jump on the trampoline, ride on a turtle racer, climb on their home playground, hide in the little plastic playhouse, and numerous other adventures. She chatted the entire time filling me full of valuable informational tidbits!
We saw Levi, Easton, Abby Lee and their mother getting a little exercise one day this week. They walked down the driveway in their colorful boots. One fellow had on a left green boot and a right blue one and the other had on a left blue boot and a right green one. They were cute bee-bopping down the hill and back up. I'm sure mom was grateful for the energy that was spent up doing that1We've seen photos of Cassie and Evie pulling weeds as they tag along with their parents doing landscaping jobs. They are smiling and enjoying the sunshine and the finished products their mother posts really look nice!
I've seen Twitter and Facebook posts where local schools are highlighting senior students and turning on the athletic field lights to honor 2020 graduates. I saw a video post of a couple of school choir collaborations where students each sang his/her part and all of the recordings were mixed together to make a performance and I was amazed at the beauty of the voices and the talent involved. Small gestures like that have got to make a difference in times like these. My heart goes out to them at what experiences they are giving up in order to preserve health and well-being of themselves and others!
I've interacted with teachers all week who have been learning something new and taking risks to try new things in order to step up and try to meet the needs of their students. Distance learning is definitely not as easy as one might think and distance teaching is a whole different animal than classroom teaching. I applaud those who are taking those risks and reaching out to students and working to try to help educate those who will be our future leaders, caregivers, service providers, and fellow citizens!
I've also seen folks making an effort to learn new things like gardening. Many questions and responding suggestions have been popping up about growing vegetables in a back yard. I also saw a teacher post a math problem that involved four cracked eggs. One had a dark yellow yolk and the others had a lighter yellow yolk, The teacher was asking students things like:- Identify which came from the farm and which from the store and explain why you think that
- Express that as a fraction
- Express that as a decimal
- How many ways can you represent this relationship?
- Research to find out why the eggs might look different
- Create a graphic of the life-cycle of an egg
- Use 3-4 adjectives to describe each egg
- What is the ratio of yolk to white?
- If you double the number of farm eggs, how many eggs would there be altogether?
- If a chicken lays one egg per day, how many eggs would you have in two weeks?
- What is your best recipe using eggs?
- Is there a line of symmetry in this picture?
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