Yesterday, Tuesday, March 17, I was up early with lots of energy. I had researched and planned the day's lessons and activities from all the great ideas friends had shared on Facebook. I cooked everyone a nice big breakfast.
Sebastian seemed pretty excited about the idea of Dadda being teacher. I knew his teachers usually started with "What do you know about X?" And I had watched a video about using concept mapping, so I pulled out our little blackboard and started with "What do you know about space and planets?" The answers--the Earth has lots of things, the Moon Landing, the Sun is bright, Venus, Mars, and Saturn's rings. A fruitful beginning.

Using the Preschool's daily schedule as a guide, I realized that the sit-down learning times weren't long, so there's not a lot I had to plan in that way for the first day. We rounded out the first session with a Story Bots video rap about the Planets, which we repeated at the end of the day.
With that intro we headed down to the office, which we plan to do every day for a little change of scenery. While I got some work done he did a great job of entertaining himself and Nash our puppy.
One of the beautiful things occurring right now are all the people sharing things online--musicians recording music, authors reading books, museum creating virtual tours, folks sharing activity ideas for kids, etc. I spent a lot of the day posting such resources to my congregation's Facebook group to give people ways to stay engaged.
When we got back home we watched Stories from Space, as an astronaut read one of his favorite books, Ada Twist, Scientist. After this one of those unplanned moments arose. He asked a question about moons, so we googled and NASA has such great resources online, we watched one of their videos about moons in the Solar System and Sebastian was really excited to learn there were so many, that Saturn has more than 80, and that Uranus has ones with ice volcanoes.
Fortunately yesterday was nice and sunny and we played out side for good stretches of time. He's SO good at t-ball batting that we had hoped to get him into spring sports; another thing that will wait. Today it's raining, so we'll have to do some things on our front porch.

Sebastian was also eager to help prepare lunch; he's always liked cooking. And later in the day he helped me collect the trash, sort the recycling, and carry it all to the curb--chores he's not assisted with in the past.
In the afternoon and evening there ended up being more TV time than I had originally planned, but there's only so much one can do to entertain and engage one's child, particularly when one still has work to do. But we kept alternating with little lessons, play, and other activities. His preschool sent along a special St. Patrick's Day yoga routine, which we did together. He kept telling me, "Here's how you do it."

Speaking of St. Patrick's Day, we did venture away from planets for a while in the afternoon to read about St. Patrick and to dance to Celtic music.

By late afternoon this Dadda was pretty worn out, especially imagining weeks of this routine. Fortunately a good friend who now lives in California called and we video chatted for a long time. Reconnecting with folks also stuck at home is going to be one of the beautiful parts of this. Sebastian and I plan to connect with a family member or friend every day.
In the evening we were in the backyard and neighbors to the east and south were both outside, so we chatted over the fences. I can imagine there will also be a lot of this going on.
We weren't successful in getting the Metropolitan Opera's stream of La Boheme to work on our TV, but we did watch it on my phone, curled upon the couch together. Sebastian watched for 45 minutes, far more than I expected, with lots of questions and me having to explain everything. He was very upset when we finally stopped, because we were well past his bedtime.