August 4, 2020 (Tuesday, MECQ)

Dear Diary,
 
Today is the fifth day of homeschooling for my seven-year-old son. He slept again for 12 hours overnight. He slept at 9:00 pm last night and woke up at 9:00 am this morning. I was curious about this so I looked it up on google and found that 11 hours is sufficient sleep for a seven-year-old like my son. Apparently, he is getting more than enough sleep for his age. :D

When my son woke up, he made the bed right away, like it was already a habit. Wait, what?! It was already a habit! Yay! Hooray for today!

We ate breakfast together and proceeded to our homeschooling session for today. We started at 10:35 am with a three-minute prayer then I asked him to identify the date and day today. I also explained the difference between the word ‘date’ and the word ‘day’. I let him practice this by asking about the date and day yesterday and tomorrow. This took five minutes.

Our session was interrupted by barangay health officials today. They were encouraging me to bring my son for the polio vaccine at the house of the homeowner’s association’s president today. However, I firmly declined since he has an auto-immune disease and it might not do him good if he mingled outside with others. I could change my mind if my husband tells me to do otherwise. But as he is not around right now, then we just have to wait. And there goes 10 minutes. :)

After the interruption, I helped him identify the weather today. He was able to easily identify today as a sunny day in just two minutes! I feel proud.

When we moved on to practicing the national anthem, I had to interrupt his doodling on his white board. He loves to draw Spongebob characters since it is the main cartoon show he is watching these days.

And since we were aiming for him to master Lupang Hinirang as our national anthem, we practiced again today. He was unmotivated to practice today so I took 50 minutes to create my own version with a tempo which he could hopefully catch up with.

My husband came at two minutes past 12 noon and my son decided to show him yesterday’s ninja drawing proudly. He showed his appreciation to our son before proceeding to discuss with me about the vaccine offer. My husband was considering the pros and cons of having our son vaccinated today because he is also worried that the people at the satellite unit might be asymptomatic. He finally decided to disregard the invitation due to our son’s health condition.

And as if distractions were not enough, my son now wants to play and sing to the video “How’s the Weather”. I just let him do it since homeschooling is supposed to cater to the child’s needs. Then he left the song playing in the background as he engaged in some pretend play. 

When I was ready to resume, I called my son back to sing along to my version of the national anthem. We agreed to do it again tomorrow. We practiced for a total of 20 minutes.

Next, we discussed watering plants for Technology, Home Economics, and Livelihood Education. We watched a video on why we need to water plants and how to properly do it. We also watched a video about people who earn a living by watering plants. We finished watching both videos and discussing its contents in 20 minutes as well.

For our music and physical education session, we enjoyed hand clapping as we sang Nanay, Tatay. The one who makes a mistake gets a pinch in the ear. He was the one who suggested this today and still, he found this to be exciting and fun. This lasted for 14 minutes, after which I decided to end today’s session early since we were very much distracted with my husband’s presence. 

Today’s subjects included:
- Civics, Culture, Geography, and History
- Technology, Home Economics, and Livelihood Education
- Music, Arts, Physical Education and Health

 I finalized “his notes” for today and prepared the lesson for tomorrow in 30 minutes. That’s it for our fifth day!