On Sunday, March 22nd, I received an announcement via text that the Ministry of Education had developed a 'We learn at home' program to facilitate learning for all students during the lockdown. The programming would air on television starting Monday morning. Aliah's teacher incorporated this into her lesson plans for the week. Aliah needs to watch the program every morning between 9 and 10 AM. Sounds great... except we don't have a TV.
Well, maybe I can stream it on the computer. I started searching for the channel, Clan TV. It's part of RTVE. Ok, found RTVE a la carte. So how do I get to the Clan channel? Oh, here's a link. Click on the link. It takes me to a webpage. On the webpage is a button that says Direct with a play symbol. Click on the button. It takes me back to the RTVE a la carte page I started on. OK. There's a little play symbol on that page. Maybe that's the ticket. Click that. Wait. Watch the urls scroll down below. Nothing changes. That button apparently does nothing. Click the button next to Channels. Oh look, there's a button for Clan. Click it. That takes me back to the webpage with the Direct button. Seriously? Is this a joke? Is there really even a Clan channel?
Eventually, I thought I had it figured out. There were two stations listed on the announcement, Clan and La 2. I figured out how to stream La 2. It looked like officials were on live TV making an announcement at that very moment. I waited for an hour and checked for an online synopsis. In a nutshell, our lockdown was being extended until April 12th.
We were gifted a custom puzzle for Christmas (Thanks Uncle Boog!) and brought it with us to Spain. Knowing it was going to be cold and rainy this week, I decided to pick up a poster board at the store on Sunday evening to use as a puzzle-making surface. The streets were completely empty as was the store. I miss our bustling little village.
Monday morning rolled around and I fired up the laptop so Aliah could watch her program at 9 AM. It's not on. La 2 does not have 'We learn at home' programming until noon, and it's for middle schoolers. Dag nabbit! Is this really how my day is going to start? Why, yes it is!
I recorded Aliah at 9:11 AM asking the other Mamas for help. We have a group chat on WhatsApp so we can communicate with each other. It's faster to record Aliah talking in Spanish than for me to type into a translator, copy and paste. I just realized now how hilarious this is. The time is 911 and I'm asking for help. The first Mama responds, "Turn to the Clan channel on your TV, it's on from 9 to 10." I record Aliah saying we don't have a TV and asking if we can watch it on a computer. Another Mama sends a picture of her TV. She writes, "It's on the Clan channel." All the responses are in Spanish BTW, so I am copying and pasting into the translator. The second Mama then sends a picture of a webpage, www.unprofesor.com, that looks promising. I try that, but I don't see anything for 'We learn at home'. A third Mama sends a link to the Clan website and says we can watch whatever we want. What? I was still trying to figure it out at 9:56 AM. Then I gave up. Time to move on the next subject.
We made it through the rest of her work in record time, and she decided to do a little yoga. Our neighbors back in Madison told us about Cosmic Kids Yoga (Thanks Walderas!), and Aliah is really enjoying it. They have videos on YouTube, in case you're interested. She's been doing yoga pretty regularly every since.
Aliah's gym teacher also sent some links for Just Dance YouTube videos. That's become a favorite activity in casa de Conley now that the kids are required to stay inside. When the girls start to get frustrated or bored, we pull out the iPad and Just Dance. It's good exercise and good comic relief!
On Tuesday night, Aliah's teacher created a new group chat on WhatsApp so we could ask questions and send her photos of the kids' work. She started sending a nightly video to the kids telling them what they need to do the next day. In her first video, she asked each student to send a video greeting to the other kids. She also asked them to send videos of themselves reciting multiplication tables.
Wednesday was the only nice day of the week. It was a little windy but sunny and 70 F. It's been raining almost every day, so it was really nice to see the sun and blue sky. Both girls got through their homeschool work, and then we all played some euchre on the balcony. After dinner, Aliah sent her greeting video and then we started to practice her multiplication tables so we could send those videos too.
I love math and find it fun, but let's be clear, a love of math does not make teaching math any easier when you have no idea what you are doing. I think I'm making total sense, explaining that 2 x 4 is the same as 4 x 2 and 4 x 2 is the same as 4 + 4. Aliah looks at me like I'm speaking a foreign language. She got through her 2's table easily enough, but the 4's table produced some tears. She was tenacious though. She wanted to keep working until she got it, and she did.
Haila was upstairs in her room doing her work on Thursday. All of a sudden, she's yelling for us to come upstairs. Our rooster friend is across the street. We sometimes see him perched on a pipe, but that day he was getting a little exercise and moving around. BTW, when he's perched on the pipe, he can see right inside our upstairs bathroom. It's a little weird when you're taking a shower and you realize a chicken is watching you!
We started to make a little progress on our puzzle Thursday night. Aliah also made me a Mother's Day drawing. I know it's still two months away, but she's like her Mama and likes to plan ahead. She asked if she could show it to me early. It was super cute, so I thought I'd share. I especially appreciated her affirmation at the bottom considering my lack of teaching skills.
Aliah forgot to bring home her art book when school closed, so we skipped art the first week of homeschool. I sent a message to the teacher this week explaining, and she said Aliah could do it when she returned to school. Several other Mamas responded that their kiddos forgot too. A couple of other Mamas responded with photos of the assignment; it was to create a landscape using colored paper. We didn't have any colored paper, but we had white paper, colored pencils, and colored sharpies. We created our own colored paper, grabbed the scissors and the glue, and she got to work. Her art is now decorating the living room wall.
Saturday was yet another cool and rainy day. Shawn decided to make some serious comfort food. It took him several hours to cook this delicious pan of lasagna, but it was incredible. It probably could have fed 20 people too. I know what I'll be eating for lunch this week. Yum! We have a daily quote calendar (Thanks, Sally and Jeff!) that seems to be spot on during this lockdown. The quote for the weekend said, "My hobbies are eating and complaining that I'm getting fat." That sounds exactly right.
Aliah worked on the puzzle while her Dad was cooking. Haila, Aliah and I completed the perimeter earlier in the week. Now we're trying to work on the interior. Haila sorted the pieces by color, so hopefully we'll be able to make some good progress in the next week. Do you see something/someone starting to emerge? No, it's not a yeti.
We did a fair amount of video chatting this week. Now that most of our family and friends are home all day, it's easier for us to connect with people in the States. Aliah and Tenalyn, her best friend from Madison, even did yoga together. Haila is supposed to connect with her church youth group tonight, and I have multiple video chats scheduled for next week already. I heard my friend Nicole hosted an extended family bingo game via video chat, so I challenged my sister Ann to do the same. We'll see if she comes through!
As of right now, we are two weeks into our four week lockdown. We have homeschooling next week and Spring Break the week after. I am personally looking forward to a week of no school work! I suspect the lockdown will be extended, but I am still hopeful that it will only be until the end of April. Once again, I close a blog with four words... Only time will tell.
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