And just like that, she’s off to First Grade!
Obviously, these last few months of Kindergarten didn’t really go as originally planned. Eloise’s last official day in the classroom was on March 11th. At the time, I think everyone thought we would for sure be headed back into normal school before the end of the year. But as the outbreak really grew, especially here in Seattle, we could see that sending all of those kids back into the classrooms was just not feasible.
Eloise transitioned so well to doing “homeschool” even though she desperately missed her teacher, classroom, and school community. She truly LOVED school and riding the bus so it was hard to see her not be able to do those things. But, she had a great foundation set by her teacher for the months that she was in the classroom, including the basics for reading, spelling, addition and subtraction.
Once she was home, I tried as best as I could to keep up with her academics. Each weekday morning we did a “morning activity” after breakfast which was the time we focused on school work. This was generally doing workbook pages (we had the Highlights Kindergarten, K to 1, and First Grade ones that Eloise LOVED), reading, or an art project. Luckily Eloise is an eager learner and has always loved worksheets and workbooks, so that made it much easier on this brand-new teacher! And since Aaron has been working from home, he would take the kids out for “recess” on breaks between meetings.
Eloise’s teacher and the Kindergarten teaching team at her school offered different types of lessons via the school website each week. Honestly, Eloise really wasn’t interested in watching any of these videos, so we didn’t push it. Studies consistently show that kids Eloise’s age aren’t really able to effectively learn via online resources and we could see that in her, so we let her choose the learning materials. Plus, it meant less screen time during the day! Eloise did end up having weekly Zoom meetings with her Kindergarten class (and eventually her teacher joined as well) and while it took a bit of coaching to get her to sit in on these calls, she did enjoy seeing and talking to her friends.
The weather was actually pretty great during the entire pandemic with a nice warm-ish spring, so we took advantage as much as possible. Every late afternoon (after Eloise’s quiet time during Daphne’s nap) has been spent outside either with the girls in the backyard playing, or in the front doing bikes, scooters, or sidewalk chalk. The sidewalk right in front of our house is nice and flat, and generally pretty quiet so it was perfect for the girls to be outside and play. After not doing much biking over the winter, Eloise had to re-learn a few bike skills. But after weeks and weeks of being on her bike at least once per day, she is really good on her bike!
We also tried to take advantage of the time at home to do non-academic things as well. There was a lot of open playtime for the girls where I would just let them play. Eloise told me that she wanted to learn how to tie a shoe (since I wouldn’t let her get lace-up shoes until she knew how to tie them!) and after setting her up with some shoe laces laced up in cardboard and helping her over a few weeks, she learned how to tie a shoe! And Aaron had her help him build a computer, showing her the different components and how they went together. Aaron and the girls also prepped, planned, and planted the garden for the raised beds in our backyard.
Despite the huge disruption in her learning, Aaron and I are both shocked at just how much Eloise learned and grew over this school year. We are unsure of what the fall and First Grade will bring, but we know she will be ready after a summer break.
And here’s Eloise’s first day of Kindergarten!
Happy Summer Eloise!
M