Moving On – summer learning despite the heat and virus

Typically, we do not do a ton of book learning over the summer. The girls generally get to spend their time at church camps, serving others, mission trips, and other camps or classes. The girls are typically gone every other week, on average, during the summer. As with so many other things, this summer has the theme of “everything is different.” No camps. Not any of them. No mission trips. Serving others locally looks different. VBS will be online. Everything is different.

So, what do we do?

We decided to move on. We started our school year July 6. Miss E is working on 11th grade and getting her dual credit information taken care of. Miss L started 9th grade and is learning with a very different curriculum, so she is getting used to that. Miss J started her 6th grade and being encouraged to work much more independently than before.

Is it hard? You bet. I am definitely getting the question of “why do we have to do school?”

A lot. But, we are planning to take some good chunks off in the fall when we typically get a bit burned out. Maybe we will take from Thanksgiving to after the New Year off this year. That is typically a difficult time frame for us due to activities. That would make it easier. And knowing that, they are able to move on without too much grumpiness.

And, dance classes make everything a bit better, too. The girls are each taking five weeks of dance classes. Each class is an hour to an hour and a half. They are taking 6 classes each. It is a good bit of activity as the temperatures climb (hit 104 here this week) and they don’t want to be outside much.

We are also working on virtual materials for church. We spent part of last week making videos of puppet scripts to share online. They did 4 scripts and 3 sets of songs. Miss E assisted in the sign language interpretation of the song videos and will hopefully be able to add sign interpretation to the puppet scripts videos. We are working on that part of it still. The girls wrote the scripts (in collaboration with another young lady). They are about to tackle scripts for Vacation Bible School, which will be done virtually in August.

The two older girls are also helping teach Wednesday night Bible classes this summer. And being asked to assist on some of the Sunday morning classes.

Much of these activities would not have happened or would have happened differently had COVID-19 not been affecting things life as it is. Great lessons on adaptability have been learned and they have been able to participate differently in some activities. They also have been able to take more of an active role in some teaching opportunities.

Moving on with our learning has been different, not necessarily “good”, but a good thing to do.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Tagged: education, high school, Middle School