It’s been a little over a week since our school district made the difficult decision to close all schools, and four days since Governor Newsom ordered a shelter-in-place for all of California. During this time, I’ve honestly been scrambling trying to get my work in order while letting my two little ones kind of have a free for all —whoops!
I’ve seen several people post that we should just take this time to spend as a family and forgo a schedule, but as much as I would love to just have one-on-one time with my babies, I was still required to work from home, and I just have an innate need to reach out to my students (who were also blindsided by school closures).
The first week, I let my little ones watch movie after movie, run a muck in our front yard, and just have unstructured play until they were tired. I even let them stay up until 11pm when their usual bedtime is 7:30pm! As the spread of the COVID-19 virus worsens, and the possibility of school being closed for the rest of the school year though, I’m seeing that we really need to have a more structured system in place.
The teacher in me decided to create a visual schedule for my kids to follow (of course it’s laminated). I’ve gone over the pictures with them and now they know when to expect to do schoolwork, circle time/reading time, snack time, playtime, lunchtime, and nap time. Putting a limit on snack time has been the BIGGEST game changer. It’s only been a day, but they refer to their boards to see if they can get a snack.
