Adventures in Home Learning: Episode 14

Like most parents, I’m struggling to keep my daughter from being on the computer or a device ALL day long. It’s summer, I want her to have some experiences, and create things, but I still have to do my job, whether it’s from home or at the office.

I created a summer schedule, below, based on https://teentake30.com/f/simplified-covid-19-weekday-schedule-for-teens-and-tweens?blogcategory=Daily+Schedule.

By 8 am	Wake up and dress.
8:30 am	Breakfast
9-10 am	Outside time
10 – 10:30 am	Chores
10:30 – Noon	Academic exercise – math worksheets, puzzles, etc.
Noon – 12:30 pm	Lunch
12:30 – 1:30 pm	Artistic endeavors – music, dance, art, etc.
1:30 – 3:00 pm	Reading and/or writing
3 – 4:00 pm	Outside time
4:00 – 6:00 pm	Free time
6:00 – 7 pm	Family dinner
7 – 9 pm	Free time
9 – 10 pm	Prepare for bedtime

Now, I’m not going to be inflexible about it. (She is more than me.) My husband also had an idea of setting up a board with a variety of activities with numbers on them so she could roll his 20 sided die and get an activity to do.

(By the way, I went out to give it to her and she was eating with her phone again. I have told her before that she needs to put the phone down while eating. She dumped her pancake on the floor the other day. This may take some time and reminders.)

I told her to finish breakfast, look at the list, and think about it. See if there are any changes or additions to make. What did she do? She finished breakfast, put her dish in the kitchen, and went straight back to her phone.

I did not get angry, I was not surprised. I went out, had her turn off the phone and take her head set off. I try to speak in a calm and loving tone when correcting her, because it’s easy to get angry and feel harassed that I had given her instructions and she wasn’t following them. I asked her what I had asked her to do?

I explained that I wasn’t going to take the phone away from her. (That idea has induced a mild panic before.) But that her mind needed a variety of activities like art and music and her body did too, like going outside to play and get exercise, so we would be limiting how much time she spent on devices. I asked her if that made sense and she said yes.

So far, so good. A little time outside checking the garden and fruit trees, a little time working on chores, and a little time organizing leftover worksheets from the school year that she could do this summer to keep the info in her mind.

We’ll get through this, I’m sure of it, and be all the better for having a little more time with our kids.

As you can see from the pictures, our garden is doing really well! The one lone pumpkin plant is labeled in the upper left and we have several little cucumber plants, pictures in the lower right. The upper right is sunflowers and the lower left are acorn squash plants. I’m extremely grateful tonight for the rain I can hear coming in little showers outside. 😊