Today we awoke to find A stuck into his Science homework from InterHigh. "I thought you were setting your alarm for half 10 today?" I asked.
"Well yeah... but N and J woke me up wayyyy earlier than that, so I thought I'd just get on with my homework", he replied.
Fair enough, I can't argue with that.
After he had finished the Science, he came downstairs to crack on with History homework, which involved some cutting and sticking.
When we got downstairs, we found N had already completed the daily challenges on Skoolbo, and had unlocked what he described as a 'green hippo.' I'm not sure I'm convinced - I think it might be a green pig. Either way, he'd sneaked downstairs to do educational work, which was highly impressive.
L was already well underway with her Physics lesson. She's surprising me with how disciplined she's being. Ordinarily she's a very late sleeper and a very very late riser (think waking up at 2pm) and through lockdown and the summer holidays I've been wondering how on earth she was going to get up in time to get any studying done. She promised me she would though, and true to her word she's been setting her alarm for 9.30am every morning, and working from 10am every day, for five full hours a day. She got quite irritated that the Absorb Online Learning's maintenance yesterday meant that her schedule was disturbed. I'm glad she's being so studious, it's nice to see.
This is what her course home screen looks like. She's got her four subjects there - Physics, Maths, Biology, and History.
As you can see here, the green sections are the ones she has currently completed. These are full IGCSE courses, so she has from now until roughly Easter to get through them all, before being assigned practice exam papers, ready for her exams in May.
As usual, N and J got on nicely with their morning reading. I think J will be choosing a new book soon, as he's speeding through it.
After reading, J had a go on Mission: ISS on his dad's Oculus Quest VR. For those of you who are not familiar with this, it's an educational application which puts you inside the International Space Station.
You experience everything the way an astronaut would, and there are informative videos explaining about all the different parts of the space station, and daily life in orbit. You have several missions to complete, like moving a mechanical arm outside the space station. He said it was really tricky but really interesting. He came off after about half an hour as the lack of gravity was starting to make him feel a little motion sickness.
Following that, N had a turn on my Oculus Quest VR, but as Mission: ISS would have been too difficult for him, we opted to put him on Ocean Rift so that he could swim with various sea creatures. He originally objected, saying he believed it would be boring, but once he was in the experience he didn't want to come off.
He loved seeing the Orca whales, playing with sea-lions, and learning about sea turtles. It's very educational as not only do you get to see the creatures, but you learn about them as well.
After being immersed in virtual worlds, N and J wrote about their experiences, and N coloured in a picture of a sea turtle.
A only had the one lesson today, which was Communications. He wasn't sure what to expect, but he said it was quite a good lesson, discussing ways in which the world has changed outside since the pandemic broke out, and what differences the children have noticed in terms of nature.
J worked on some Maths and English from Twinkl. worksheets. He had finished his VR writing much more quickly than N did, so it was an opportunity to work on fractions, and to see where he was at in terms of grammar.
It turns out he'd forgotten a few grammatical terms such as determiners and modal verbs, so I think we'll work on those tomorrow.
We finished off the day with L's Classical Civilisation lesson. We're right on schedule, which was to work on one chapter per week, and we're just about at the end of chapter 1.1 - just a little bit of revision tomorrow to ensure she remembers some of the more obscure terminology.
I can't believe tomorrow marks a week of home educating. It seems to have flown by. The children seem settled and I think we're getting into a flow of doing things. There's a bit of flexibility and I'm getting to know which areas the children are enjoying, which they're excelling at, and which they might need more support with. Tomorrow I have to pop out to take the car for a service, but I'll leave work for them to do under the supervision of their dad.
Roll on Friday.
