Homemade Hot Cross Buns

We've had an interesting journey in our new home schooling routine - I'm sure most families have a story or two to tell. ACT public schools went pupil free on the 24th March with 2.5 weeks of schooling left before the Easter school holidays began.

I'm unable to bring my work home so for me it's almost life like normal going to work. A few things have altered - as I am no longer need to rush home for after school activities or be around for school drop off, I've extended my hours which also allows for allocating time spaces between patients minimising the amount of patients in the waiting room. The other main work changes coincidences with general Covid guidelines - loads of hand hygiene and cleaning. Unfortunately we've had problems sourcing the soft paper towels that we use to wipe the gel off people's skin and subsequently ran out of them thus have had to improvise with other not so ideal products. These towels for us are a bit like the toilet paper situation!! The order has been on back order since February (before Covid) so who know when they will return to our rooms!

At home however life is certainly not like normal! With work spaces all set up, everyone was keen for the first day at home. I arrived home around 5pm and asked Andy how the day went. He replied that he was going off for a longish ride!! Hmm ok so not that great.

For Andy and the girls working together at home required a revision of expectations after the first day. Ella seemed to be self sufficient and had enough work to continue with. Her school seemed quite quick to transition to online learning via google classrooms. In fact Ella adamantly told us that she wasn't home schooling but self schooling!!

Meanwhile Katy who is Year 5 had very little to do. The school was under pressure to produce an online learning platform which surprisingly takes more than 24 hours to create!! They were also under instruction from the ACT education department about how this was to be delivered and were not allowed to provide any worksheets or education material to the kids in the meantime!! We really felt the teachers and the situation they themselves in but at the same time it was all a little strange.

For Katy though this meant she was bored.... together Katy and Andy came up with a daily timetable. He printed off a few maths sheets but really had no idea about the curriculum or what level Katy was at. Turns out that Katy needs more interaction with her learning which meant Andy was having trouble completing his work tasks.

As the days ticked by, Andy and the girls became more efficient and familiar with their new situation. Katy and Ella both found themselves in the kitchen baking. Katy cooked these very impressive hot cross buns which were served warm with butter and were delicious!!

At the start of the second week of home schooling, Katy's teachers were ready to roll out and test the online learning platform they'd obviously been frantically working on! Katy was excited to receive this timetable via seesaw.

A little video of the 5/6 teachers introduced how this system would work. The slide contained the timetable for the day with links to powerpoint presentations or videos for writing and maths. Katy was much happier with this but still required help to work through the theory part of each lesson before continuing on with the tasks on her own. Unfortunately, it was only a tester and for the remainder of the week there was no further instructions so once again Katy and Andy were required to devise a boredom prevention plan!! One good thing though was her piano teacher Arianne, gave Katy her piano lessons via zoom!