I won't lie and say that the start of the day was smooth sailing. There were some connectivity issues at InterHigh which meant that A was late to his lesson. Not his fault, not our fault, it was entirely down to the servers at IH, as confirmed by the many many other students who also had problems connecting.
Not the end of the world, there are bound to be a few teething problems at the beginning of an academic year. It happens.
He was nervous, but once he finally got into the swing of it, I think he was okay... admittedly he was concerned that he'd be picked out to answer a question via microphone, or to read aloud, but he wasn't. He'll get used to it I'm sure - generally speaking he's not particularly shy. He seemed quite engaged with it at least; he's a good boy, he doesn't mess about during lessons.
L got stuck into her IGCSE Absorb Online Learning courses today - Physics, History, Biology, and Maths. She said some of it was a bit simple, for example her Maths course started by teaching her addition and multiplication. That seems kind of daft, but I guess it must be starting you from the basics, just to ensure you don't have any holes in your understanding.
I did rather enjoy a joke by a Scottish fellow on one of her Maths videos:
"Who invented the circle?"
"Circumference!"
Lame Christmas cracker joke. I love it!
She was very animated whilst I was teaching her Classical Civilisation. We started with the three main Greek gods - Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. It was all good fun, an hour passed by without it really feeling as though five minutes had even passed.
J and N did numerous things today. They started with reading (both have chosen books by David Baddiel), and then some Maths games. N gets bored quite quickly, but they easily played together for a good hour before starting to tire of it. It was a great fun way to ease into a Monday morning without it feeling too heavy. N won the game, and practiced plenty of sums in the process. J didn't mind losing, and he brushed up well on his multiplications.
After that was History. The boys enjoyed learning about the river Nile and the pyramids, and then making pyramid structures of their own. We discussed where Egypt is located, and they found it on the wall map, as I pointed out that it's in the continent of Africa... so I guess you could say there was a smidgen of Geography thrown into that lesson as well.
In all seriousness, it was absolutely brutal. Jogging around the field 20 times would be less arduous, albeit very boring. I think we'll find some other daily form of exercise starting tomorrow.
L on the other hand likes her Beat Saber on VR. (To be fair, so do I.) She doesn't go at it half heartedly either, she really builds up a sweat.
N got stuck into various activities on Skoolbo. He loves it. A little literacy, a little numeracy, a few educational games, and even some Science such as information about light bulbs were the highlight of the day. He has the opportunity to "unlock" cute characters with the more activities he does, so it's like a fun challenge to him, and he forgets that he's doing 'school work'. I need to find more of this sort of thing, it's the best way for him to retain concentration.
Meanwhile J has found a new passion. He begged not to have to do Spanish, so instead we started him off with doing some 3D modelling in Blender, and he was working on basic shapes, and that progressed to the beginnings of a chair.
Turns out he loved it so much, that even after dinner when we were no longer "officially" doing lessons, he took it upon himself to create a little car.
I know it's pretty basic, but given that it's his first day of ever creating 3D objects, it was a great start. He absolutely can't wait to get stuck into coding tomorrow. He'll be starting with Python. He's really found his calling I think. The problem is that he always wants to run before he can walk. If he goes too quickly then at some point he'll miss out important steps and get frustrated, so it'll be a challenge getting him to reign back his enthusiasm sufficiently so that he follows every step in turn. Anyway that's not my department, I don't know the first thing about coding, or 3D modelling. That's his dad's territory. It's great that J is so eager though, he really seems to love this sort of thing. It's lovely to see him enjoying what he's working on.
That more or less concludes day one. If I do say so myself it went very successfully, even if P.E. with Joe wasn't a huge hit (sorry Joe!)
Roll on tomorrow.
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