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Caroline’s in 1st Grade!

Well, it’s not exactly how we pictured her first week of 1st grade, but Caroline rocked remote school last week! I sat with her the entire week to help her with tech support so I had a front row seat to first grade which was interesting to say the least! Caroline’s teacher is an absolute rock star. Her patience teaching 20 kids how to mute/unmute themselves on Zoom, keeping them focused, engaged and positive…mind blowing. We feel so lucky to have her.

Here’s a few scenes from our first week…

On Sunday night, we continued our back-to-school steak dinner tradition (see last year’s dinner here)! It was easy to throw together and was a super special night for the kids. For dinner I made our favorite kale salad, sweet potatoes (slowcooked in the crockpot all day) and of course, steak! We grabbed the same mini confetti cake again this year from the Harris Teeter deli case for dessert, and by some miracle I was able to track down the school bus for the cake topper.

Sources

We spent a lot of time on Sunday cleaning out the play room and transitioning it to a “classroom.” I purged a lot of toys while the kids weren’t looking, organized all of the school supplies, sharpened all the pencils and made a ton of printables to keep handy so we’d have easy access to all of the zoom meeting passwords, class/specials schedules, etc.

Caroline was a little nervous and honestly a little sad on the first day of school. She’s been missing her friends the past 5 months and has been excited for first grade, so meeting her teacher over an ipad and seeing the familiar faces on the screen was hard for her. We spent some time reflecting on all the positive things to come out of a virtual start to the school year — like getting to bring your mommy to first grade with you, and that helped a bit. And she was really, really, really excited to wear the pencil dress she picked out!

I was a little worried about the amount of hours spent on a screen all day, but the first week was really light on school work. In fact, on the first day of school the virtual platform crashed statewide so there was only a few morning Zoom meetings. The rest of the week was spent getting the hang of things and our teacher started small group assessments. So I’m thinking the school work is really going to ramp up this week…

I received a lot of requests to share our advice and favorite items for remote school so I rounded them up here! While I don’t feel qualified AT ALL to give advice on this, I would recommended syncing your kids school iPad to your TV with an HDMI cord. Not only will they be able to see their teacher/assignments much bigger and better, YOU can keep an eye on what they are doing…(ahem, stop minimizing your teacher to play games).

Here are our favorite items!

Remote School Favorites

1. Whiteboard/Chalkboard Easel 2. Bean Bag Chair 3. Printer 4. Headphones 5. iPad Carry Case 6. Chrome Book 7. WiFi System 8. Acrylic Organizer 9. Desk Chair 10. File/Folder Organizer 11. School Banners 12. Bentgo Box 13. School Supply Caddy 14. Letter Board 15. Uncrustable Maker 16. Bluelight Blocker Glasses 17. HDMI Cord + iPad Adapter 18. Lap Desk Organizer 19. Clipboards 20. Insulated Tumbler

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Jen

Saturday 29th of August 2020

Where did you get that long white cubby organizer for the playroom? Love it!

Christina

Monday 31st of August 2020

Ikea!

Caley

Friday 28th of August 2020

So clever to put it all up on a big screen! Good luck sweet Caroline x

Danielle

Monday 24th of August 2020

That is a nice set up you have! I wish you the best of luck in remote learning.