DITL January Homeschool

Here's what Julie Bogart of Brave Writer calls a narrative sketch. The purpose is to jot down your activities one day a month or week in order to "catch" what actually happened, as opposed to what you planned. 

This month is weird because two of our five family members are not here! Laurel and M are in Mexico going to Spanish school and working in person, respectively. They are definitely still involved in the homeschool routine, though. For instance, Laurel and I met with my aunts and sisters on zoom this week for our monthly book club (the Narrative of Frederick Douglass) and M is crafting Python lessons for the kids and meeting them virtually when they need help. 

This week was weird because a massive snowstorm dumped a foot of snow on our city and 37 of 90 plows broke down during the storm, leaving a a big mess behind. We made a massive pile of snow when we cleared our driveway and all the little kids on the street came over and helped Max dig a huge tunnel through it, that will probably be there for quite a while. It turned bitterly cold so our regular activities have been canceled and we spent a lot of time indoors. 

Today we finally made it out of the neighborhood and went to my parents house to visit. They had my 4 year old nephew there and there was a lot of wrestling, pillow fights and fort building that went on. We had coffee and breakfast together and then the boys and I returned home. I went on a Zoom for "office hours" for a Brave Writer training I'm doing and we talked about reluctant writers and how to stay focused on writer's voice when the mechanics and handwriting are lagging (and cooperation). Marko started his virtual English Language Arts class with my friend, who is a secondary English teacher. Max worked on a little homophone book he is making. 

We all did some Duolingo to practice our Spanish. The boys both worked on a page of math from their Richard Fisher math workbooks. Max practiced some cursive. Marko wrote in his journal for photo class (he and M are taking a photo class on Discord that has lessons and assignments on taking better photos). Marko also worked on typing some descriptions in his slide deck of things he has done this year. We added some more notes to our February brainstorming/dumping of things we have going on next month. 

They are playing video games with their friends now. Later Marko will help Max with koans, and Max will meet virtually with M about it in the morning. Marko requested leeks in our grocery order and they finally arrived today so maybe he will make potato leek soup? We have a lot of chicken pot pie left so we may put that off until tomorrow.