Today was not our best day. It’s only the third day of homeschooling and I kinda gave up. But we’ve rallied now and I made a plan for tomorrow with more buy-in from the kids so maybe it won’t all go south.

I mean, today wasn’t a disaster, but I didn’t teach anyone anything. Here’s what we did:

  • I cleaned out and organized a big section of our family room that was flooded with toys, art supplies, and various things that were not where they were supposed to be. As a result of this, I was able to repurpose one of our shelf areas for homeschooling supplies–markers, activity books, paper, pencils, etc. Then we could reclaim the dining room table.
  • Zeke did a lot of drawing, in part inspired by the second in the series of Mo Willems’ doodle videos. We started taping up his doodles on the wall in the kitchen. I’ll post a picture of the gallery soon.
  • Zoe went through her massive collection of slime that she’s made in recent years and threw away a lot of it. She donated some of her slime supplies to our general art supply stores and culled her slime stuff to a reasonable amount.
  • Zeke and Zoe happily agreed to give away some of the toys we unearthed that they have outgrown. I have no idea how long it will be until I can actually give them away safely.
  • I took a nap. It’s true that I have a sleep disorder, but it’s also true that if I have a lot to do that I’m engaged in all day, I can avoid taking a nap. Something to strive for tomorrow.
  • After dinner, even though it was dark, we took a walk because we hadn’t left the house all day. We walked on a bike trail near our house and back through the neighborhoods. About 20 minutes in, it started to drizzle, but we kept walking because what else were we going to do? At least we got some air and a little exercise.
  • When we got home Zoe did the EvolveAll 100-pushup challenge that Master Emerson issued on YouTube. That was impressive. Randy and I said we would do pushups with her every day, but not starting with 100 probably. 🙂

OK, after writing all this the day doesn’t seem like a total failure. It’s hard to know how much to push and how much to let it go. Especially when the news seems to change every hour and we have no idea how long this is going to go on.