Mamihood Adventures: Quarantine,Week 5

Decided to replace COVID-19 with Quarantine, as I think we get bombarded enough with the name.

Hey there beautiful people, here we are. Me writing another post about Mamihood under Quarantine. You reading while in quarantine, all of US being so f’n awesome lowering the CURVE! High five bitches! Unless you are the dummies in Florida that made your way to the beaches less than 40 minutes after they opened, or in our very own Orange County packed up the beaches. I mean, “Que ondas huey?”

Anyways, it’s been official my kiddo is not going back to school until the new school year. Even then, we are not sure when that will be. The school district is not taking any chances and will be waiting on the Health Department to give the go ahead. You know what this means, right?

I’m counting down to SUMMER! Yes, I know my kid is in preschool and I might have it easier than other parents. But the pressure and the exhaustion is universal. It has to be. If not, I suck as a mami and if that were the case he wouldn’t call me his “favorite mami in the world.” My son is high energy, gets bored when he already knows the subject, and asks a million and one questions. I’m not kidding.

He wakes up asking questions: “Mami did you know that the Octopus has a beak?” Then we have the constant information: “Cheetahs don’t roar mami and they are also scared of dogs. They hunt, not fight.”  Followed by “Mami can you say chee-tah? Say it Mami, say Chee-tah” Smart cute kid. But the cuteness is starting to wear off.

I’m lying. It will never wear off. At least not until middle school.

Back to my excitement for Summer. During the Summer, I can take days off without feeling guilty or having to make my kid suffer through make up work. Let’s be honest, I take days off now. However, I feel some guilt when I do. Fine. Since, we are being honest. It’s not really guilt it’s more fear with a bit of frustration, since I will have to partake in the dance that is make up work.  Other homeschooling parents know what this is.  For those of you non-parents, it goes like this: he whines about the extra work, I stand firm in him doing it, he whines some more and scribbles his work because apparently the pencil now weighs a ton. I erase scribbling, he gets mad because I’m erasing his work and make him do it again. He forgets how to count and trace, he needs me to help him hold his pencil. This is one heavy pencil. This goes on for a bit and it ends with me saying “Okay, I’m done too! We will do this on the weekend.” Horrified? Yup, we ARE too.

“What does it matter? Just move on to the next lesson.“ All reasonable logic, right? Well, I can’t because I have to take a picture (yes, a picture) of my kid’s work and send it to the teacher on Friday. Reminder: he’s a in Preschool.

You might remember in my previous Quarantine post, I had come up with my own lesson plan. Well, I’m now following the teacher’s plan; however, I’m tweaking it a bit. My kid gets bored of tracing his name, the letter of the week (my plan had a letter a day), and the number of the week every.Single.Day. Honestly, I get tired of convincing him to do it too.

I bought this activity book, which has all types of neat stuff from letters to counting, science, colors, and so much more. I also still print out different worksheets and use Abc.mouse. It seems to help, the fact that I give him a treat once he is done with everything also helps.

For Spring break we did some fun art and counting activities. We also made a pizza and we learned about food waste. Oh yea, Urban farming at its finest. We had a large bag of snap peas that were starting to go bad, my mother started snapping away (we’re Catholic, it’s a sin to let food go to waste-as if we needed more sins), my kiddo showed interest and asked what she was doing. So, we did what any smart parent does. Put his ass to work. As we did we explained what we were doing and why. We discussed food waste and composting. Then we planted some peas that were sprouting.

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I feel the urge to state the following: Apparently our Governor has stated that he might start the school year earlier, as in July. Although, my kid is exhausting I don’t think that’s a good idea. Here are my two cents on the subject.

• Kids had a rough time adapting to their new settings. Not all kids do well with online courses, so this was an additional challenge on top of getting use to the new “normal”. We can’t forget how some kids might have been scared, stressed or worried with their home life on top of trying to complete their school work. I think the kids deserve some down time. I think they need some time to just enjoy some time off, with no worry about school work during a great pandemic.
• Most importantly I think teachers need some time off too! I think they deserve some time off and a raise! Teachers are not only trying to help our kids adjust to the new normal, but some have had to have a crash course in IT. I see it with my son’s teacher, I can tell that she has never used some of the platforms we are using, but I can also see how every week she is becoming better at it. She told us, that they too are receiving IT classes so that they can in turn help the kids and parents with any issues they may have. Teachers with older students, have to grapple with more, a lot more. One high school teacher I know said that she receives text messages late at night from kids that are having trouble understanding something. All of this, while dealing with their own kids, family and whatever challenges home life might bring them.
• I do believe the Teachers Union will fight this, there’s no way they should let this fly.

In short, give the teachers a break, give them their Summer Break without any interruptions as they deserve it.

These past few weeks have been interesting and entertaining. Not as much as the chaos that was my first zoom call, though. We had 10-12 kids trying to out-toy the other kid, mom’s that didn’t put their screens on mute, so everything could be heard. The teacher tried her best, as I could tell she and some of the other mom’s were not familiar with zoom. My kid was not feeling it at first, I couldn’t help but crack up as he would just stare at the teacher who was trying her best to get all of the kids to sing along with her. By the end of it, he was more engaged.

As per the teacher, her expectations are that we, the parents, use this time as a little break. Obviously, she needs to lower those expectations because that’s not going to happen. I’m worried if I leave my nugget to his own devices, he will just take off or try to talk over the teacher. I need to manage that mute button and make sure he sticks around.

Let’s see how the next one goes, we missed the last one because we were making a chocolate mousse cake in honor of the letter C.

Yes, entertaining and hard work. As I’ve said before, I have to try my best to keep him engaged and learning. Tracing can only go so far.

As always thanks for reading and let me know how things are going for you!

Update: Since, it took me longer to post than originally planned would like to share that we did make it to this week’s zoom call. That too was another close call. We took the call outside since the weather was nice, the kids time was over and the teacher wanted to speak to the parents. He quickly disappeared, when I turned to look for him to my horror I saw him standing over the drain ready to pee! Shit! This is a video call! I quickly turned my laptop away, luckily I had it muted so they couldn’t hear my shrieky “Oh Shit!” Apparently Abuela and Nino (godfather) let him pee there. Mind you, we have a restroom about 50 feet away.

Until we meet again!