We had been homeschooling our eldest for over a decade already when the COVID-19 pandemic happened. Although we had been used to being home a lot, there were still many adjustments that we needed to make.

One example is that our time outside our house has become more limited and we could not go on field trips. We could not go to church for daily Masses and my kids, especially our eldest child, could not serve in the church during Masses. For our eldest, this was a big change. He has been serving as our parish pianist for daily evening Masses since he was 7 years old. He is almost 13 years old now. He only stopped last year when our city was included in the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Up to the very last day when kids were allowed to go out, he still served while wearing a mask.

I’m so grateful that after some time, he was able to overcome his initial challenges and was able to bounce back.

Let me share in this blog post not just how my kids and I survived our first year of pandemic homeschooling; but also, what we did and what happened last school year that I loved.

Living during a pandemic was stressful. I didn’t want to add to the stress of needing to stay alive and healthy during this time. Therefore, I made a decision to make our homeschool as relaxed as possible. We already had a relaxed homeschool approach prior to the pandemic. But I felt that we needed to just stick to the basics that our kids need to learn at this difficult time.

When I made that decision. It felt like a burden was lifted on my shoulders. I asked myself what our kids needed to learn while living in a pandemic. I prioritized those in our homeschool. This approach simplified everything.

The results were the following that I loved in our homeschool last year.

WE HAD A LOT OF FUN! I have always been intentional in making our lessons fun and interesting for our kids. But last school year, I have decided to have more fun with them by adding more games and playing more often with them. I made a decision to play as often as I can. Eventually, I made a decision to play with my kids daily. We also watched a lot of movies with the kids. I used movies to teach them. After most of the movies that we watched, I would ask our kids to write movie reports about the films that we saw. My eldest, who is a music prodigy, enjoyed learning the songs from the movies that we watched. He learned a lot of new songs and he even recorded many of them and we uploaded them on his YouTube channel. Asking him to pay attention and to learn the official soundtracks of the movies helped him to get back on track. He was energized again when he started doing this a couple of months into the lockdown.

I love that our kids learned while having fun during this past school year. Our youngest child grew by leaps and bounds in his vocabulary, spelling, and reading last school year. I think it is partly because he has been playing many word games like Letter Dice, Scrabble, Wordscapes, and Boggle.

It was not just the kids who had a blast. I had a blast too! Our joy and enthusiasm in playing games together inspired my husband to play more often with us also; since he was working from home too during this pandemic. In the past, before the pandemic happened, he would play with us only during weekends because he spends a lot of time on the road going to work and driving back home. Traffic can be so bad sometimes. By the time he gets home, he is usually tired.

Because we were having so much fun, we had many happy memories of bonding over games during the past school year.

THE KIDS LEARNED AND PRACTICED MORE LIFE SKILLS. I have incorporated household chores and other life skills in our lessons even before the pandemic. But, during the pandemic, my husband and I made a schedule or chore chart that included more practice for our boys, particularly the older two. We did this for 2 reasons. First, because we needed help from our kids since we decided not to let our stay-out cleaners go to our house to clean our house during this pandemic. We also send our laundry sometimes to the laundry shop when we are too busy. But, we also removed that from our options during this pandemic. We’ve decided to do our own laundry. Second, we wanted to make sure that our boys are equipped just in case my husband and I get sick.

The result is that our boys felt more able, accomplished, and confident. They also learned to be more responsible and helpful. Now, all our boys help in doing the laundry from sorting the clothes, loading them in the washing machine, hanging them, folding them, and putting them away into their respective closets. They also learned to cook simple and easy-to-prepare dishes. These gave me more time to rest and channel my energy to things that only I can do.

Because I was less stressed, I was less strict also and my mood was better most days.

You can read my previous blog post about life schooling here.

I LISTENED TO THE KIDS MORE. I liked keeping our structured lessons short even before the pandemic. During the pandemic, I allowed the kids to do more of what they wanted to pursue or learn. I gave them more freedom. I let them play more outside my supervision and decide on what they wanted to learn or spend their time on. If they wanted to read, I just let them read the whole afternoon until evening or before bed. If they wanted to play the piano or play chess or whatever, I gave them the freedom to do just that. As long as they are safe, not hurting or fighting each other, cleaning up their messes, it was fine with me. I allowed them more screentime also this past year. Most days, it was only less than 30 minutes. Some days, they don’t even have time to play an online game or watch videos. All the online games that they play are educational, though. Their screentime is supervised and monitored. These included word games, online chess, typing, or coding. There are also specific shows or videos that they are allowed to watch. They can’t watch just anything without asking for my permission first.

The results were amazing! I was pleasantly surprised that my eldest decided to write his own book. He finished writing his manuscript on his notebooks last year before Christmas. Yesterday, he finished typing or encoding his manuscript. It was a perfect culminating project as he ended his elementary education. My youngest child who is only in Kinder decided to write his own book also this summer. He is already done writing the draft of his first volume. He is now writing the second volume. My youngest also loved spelling this past school year. He breezed through Kinder to Grade 1. He was asking me to give him Grade 2 Spelling lessons last summer but I wanted to have a vacation. So, my husband taught him coding instead. My second child played the piano more often last school year. He discovered that he could also play songs by ear. Something that we were all happy to discover. His older brother has been doing this since he was 5 years old. My second child started doing it at 8 years old. This must have inspired our youngest again. So, he tried doing the same thing and he succeeded also. Now, it’s just me who can’t play the piano by ear at home. hahaha

THE KIDS ACHIEVED MILESTONES AND GAINED RECOGNITIONS. These were not my priority during the pandemic. As I have mentioned earlier, our main goal was to stay alive and healthy. Having a successful homeschool year was just secondary. We were all happily surprised that our boys achieved some milestones and even earned recognitions during this time. For example, our eldest child was the grand winner in the Pinoys Got Talent Homeschool Edition when he played the piano blindfolded. All our children joined online chess competitions for the first time this past school year. They even joined in the competitions organized by the NCFP or National Chess Federation of the Philippines. In one of these tournaments, our second child won 3rd place in his age group. Our eldest and youngest children got an Outstanding rating for their performances in our partner school’s Talent Show. They all had medals and certificates during their graduation and recognition ceremonies. Last but not least, our eldest collaborated with my husband in composing an original song which he and his brothers performed and recorded. It was a Visayan version of the Hail Mary. You can watch it here on my son’s YouTube channel Yanthy’s Music.

WE GOT TO SAVE MONEY. The pandemic affected our family financially, too. This was one of the reasons why I needed more time to work and why I allowed the kids to have more time to pursue their interests and play. Since our budget was tight, I bought fewer books and materials for our homeschool last school year. I did my best to make do with what we already have. I did not enroll them in P.E. classes anymore or other extra-curricular activities. It was only my eldest son who was enrolled in online Music lessons. He was taught and mentored by two good friends of mine who were professional musicians. Our eldest needs music teachers who are better than him and better than my husband and I. 😉 Our second child was a chess scholar last school year of the NCFP and the PSC or Philippine Sports Commission. Thus, we didn’t have to spend on his online chess lessons. The rest of their subjects or lessons were taught by my husband and me. My husband taught them computer and coding lessons. Sometimes, he would teach them Math also.

WE PRAYED TOGETHER MORE OFTEN & LEARNED NEW PRAYERS TOGETHER. We are devout Catholic Christians. Praying together has been our way of life from the very start. But, this pandemic moved us to pray together more often and to learn new prayers. Our kids got better both in reciting and leading the Holy Rosary and the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy. We added new prayers to our daily prayers like the Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel and the Oration Imperata regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Our discussions during our daily Bible studies are longer now and I now ask the kids to write the lessons that they have learned after each discussion. In the past, we just talk about them.

It has been a really wonderful school year! Surprisingly, we still got to cover a lot of topics even when I simply wanted to stick to the basics. It helped that my kids were naturally curious and loved reading and learning.

So, while a lot of parents are lamenting about this past school year, I’m grateful to God for our experience in the past year. These would not be possible if not for His grace and His guidance. To God be the glory!

Because we had been successful last school year, I plan to use the same approaches this new school year especially since we are still living in a pandemic. I’m confident that we will have another memorable and successful year with the help of God.