It's been a couple solid weeks with the kids doing virtual school. It goes pretty well.

For the older, it's turned into a fairly solid routine. She needs reminding and encouragement. She also suffers from Zoom fatigue, even though they're using something else. She has a couple half-hour sessions in the morning, with little work breaks between, plus a few intermittent sessions with aside classes like music. She's doing good with 70-80% attention, and when she's on, she's doing 100% work. When she's off, it's a bit of struggle.

For the younger, they do a short session, greeting everyone, talking about the class routine, and introducing the afternoon activity. They break for an hour, while we do the activity. Things like coloring a picture or another art kind of project. Then they regroup, everyone shows their project, they play a game or read a book or both. Then break for the day. It's about getting the routine and attention down. He does pretty good, although it was a cold-turkey stop of afternoon naps, and often he crashes right after the second session, and has crashed just before.

We take breaks for the park and play from time to time. I'm still working most of the days, but take breaks where I can. I've skipped a couple meetings covered by others with no impact to the teams, so all is well there.

On Monday, the little is going to in-person for everyday half-days. He'll show up after noon, do the routines with his seven classmates in class, and we'll pick him up around 2 or 3. He's super pumped to start that.

It'll be about three more weeks before the older's class returns to "hybrid." They'll be broken into three groups; the Monday-Tuesday group, Thursday-Friday group, and always virtual group. She'll be in the Thursday-Friday group. The kids will be in-person for the mornings on their days, returning home at lunch time. The afternoons and Wednesdays, and their other days will all be virtual.

There was a round-table listening session this week where parents from all of the schools in the district were voicing feedback and concerns for how the school year is going. We recognize the challenges of the day, and wanted to give positive feedback. We're still cautious with the virus stuff going on, but found we might be in the minority of the participating parents. We're still contemplating seeing how other schools in the area are weathering things, and seeing how it goes with our younger and his smaller class before we consider sending the older to her part-time classes.

It's a difficult time, with lots of changes. I want what's best for the kids, in education and health. For today, health comes first.

Everyone's healthy.