Home Schooling For Dummies*: A New Normal

*Me, the parent, not the kid

When is a bank holiday not a bank holiday? When they've moved it from the Monday to Friday to coincide with VE Day. And guess who forgot about this until Sunday night, after Isobel had gone to bed under the assumption that she had a day off 'school' the next day? Yup, this numpty.

It seemed cruel to snatch her day off away from her in the morning, so I didn't. She had the day off schoolwork. AND she's had a day off today, on the real bank holiday.

My school, my rules.

I'm finally starting to feel a bit more relaxed about this home-school stuff. We have our new timetable that seems to be working, and it's starting to feel... normal. Or a new normal, at least. We're five weeks into homeschooling (with two weeks of Easter hols in between) and the thought of Isobel going off to school every morning seems a bit weird. That isn't to say I think it's a good idea for her to home-school for a long period - far from it. Supervising is very different to teaching, which I discovered last week when Isobel needed help with her maths.

Do you remember when we were at school and we scoffed at maths, and questioned when we'd ever need to know these things? Well, that came back to bite me on the arse when I couldn't explain how to work out how many non-red cars were originally in a car park if some left and 60% of those remaining were red. NOW IS THE TIME I NEED TO KNOW THAT STUFF, and I failed.

My brain was frazzled, but luckily BBC bite-size came to the rescue when we found a clip with the formula you need to follow (confession: I still don't understand it).

If lockdown has taught me anything over these past few weeks, it's that I shouldn't give up the day job and go into teaching.