Last Summer Break Hurrah and First Day of (Virtual) School

Since the weather is currently not crazy hot, we had planned a last hurrah trip to the Nashville Zoo on Sunday afternoon with our German friends and their daughter. We got there a bit early and had plenty of time to ride the zipline a couple of times since it wasn't crowded at all. The children also were the only ones on the carousel. 

Today was the children's first day back to school. But this year, school looks a lot different than in the past few years. They are attending Virtual Online Learning from home due to the continued Covid-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, the children were excited to see who their teacher is and who else they recognize in their classes. 

In order to have a productive work/ learning environment, we moved a lot of furniture and computers around so that each child has their own space. The animals and their stuff share now all one space as well. It turned out pretty good: 

Starting off right on the first day of school:

The first morning was a bit hectic as Amelia's first zoom call began at 7:15am and parents were sitting in to get to know the teacher and get introduced to Google Classroom and learn how to view their assignments. At 7:45am, Elliot had his first zoom call and so I was zipping back and forth between two classes.  The good thing about the virtual schooling is that the children still got teachers from their actual school and are already familiar with them. Amelia has Mr. Jones for 4th grade and Elliot has Mrs. Hines for 1st grade. 

Since this is introduction week and the students who are going to in-class sessions are only attending twice a week classes (hybrid schedule), our two kids were done after an hour each with their school day. Thus, in the early afternoon, we headed to the pool where we met my friend Lisa and her 3 boys. The kids like to have some friends to play with in the water  but also like to chat and look at their books after toweling off. 

And to celebrate the end to the longest Spring Break ever and the fact that the temperature in the evening was cool enough to sit outside, Derrick and I had a beer on the porch after putting the kids to bed. We will see how this virtual schooling works out and if not, we are ready to pull them out and homeschool them as we don't believe that going back to school is a safe options until at least Spring time.