Lockdown Life

Eirinn in P5 has very kindly shared her experience of life in lockdown and her life of home schooling.

You clearly put a lot of work into this piece of writing, well done Eirinn. :)

It’s a Lockdown Life, for Us – One girl’s experience of Home School

At half eight in the morning I wake up and put on my DPS uniform and get ready for Home School. I don’t like to be late because sometimes there is a big queue to get in! When it’s time to start, my Dad sets up the computer in the kitchen and we call my cousins in London on Skype. The computer is connected to the TV so we can open a different Window on each screen. On the TV screen we go to a YouTube channel. The owner of the channel is called Joe Wicks: many children around the world including me and my cousins do P.E with Joe Wicks every morning. The workout lasts about 30 minutes, then we end the Skype call. After the workout we have breakfast. Usually I have porridge with fruit, nuts and seeds each day. Then we sit down at the table in the living room and start to do school work.

Normally I begin by getting some textbooks out from my school bag and working on those, either with my Dad or by myself (I think my Dad got these books from the Pound Shop). The books that we use are the following: English Revision, English Essentials, Algorithms and Coding, Science and Maths Revision. All of these books are for Key Stage 2. I work for about an hour and then I stop for a little break. If it’s not raining I go out to jump on my trampoline. Then it’s back to work for another hour or so. Around one o’clock we stop for lunch break and I get to go outside onto my trampoline again while we are waiting for some food. The food is always so delicious because it is prepared with love by my Mum – Yummmeeeeee!!!

When lunch time is over I usually do silent reading. My Dad is a member of NI Library Service so he can borrow and download the electronic versions of a lot of books. I was able to reach my A.R target with three books by Roald Dahl (Matilda, The Witches and The BFG) and J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Then it could be more Literacy and stuff like that, or maybe Arts and Crafts or cooking with my Mum. At 5 o’clock Home School is done for the day and I am able to go online to chat and play with my cousins Louie and Lennie all the way over in London and with my old friend in Letterkenny who we call OD (Original Dean).

I have been studying Coding, Maths, Literacy, Science, History, P.E (and other stuff that I cannot remember right now because my Dad makes me work so hard!!!!). In History I have been learning about the Victorians - I have been reading Vile Victorians and watching a series of TV programmes called 24 Hours in the Past about 6 celebs taking roles in historical recreations of Victorian life in things like a pottery, a workhouse, an inn and the city dump. Here is a History fact: did you know that in Victorian times children were used as chimney sweeps and if they were stuck in the chimney then their master would light a fire in the fire-place? True. Wow, I would hate to be a child back then, the women were treated differently to the men as well; they were paid half or a quarter of the money the men got!! Well, it really was Horrible History. In Coding I was using a website called code.org and there was a Minecraft coding class! Now my Dad has registered me for another coding class using Scratch. Also in Literacy my Father called my Granny and talked to her and she is now my online Literacy teacher. I feel really happy about that because I get to talk to her almost every day. We do our classes together on video call. Another thing I enjoy doing in Home School is the Arts and Crafts because me and my Mum are making a theatre stage - a kind of Punch and Judy show - which we will call The X Toy Factor. I feel really satisfied about my progress and I am looking forward to putting on the show with my hand puppets.

I have done nothing from my (Pound Shop) Science book yet. But I have been learning about how steam engines work from educational TV documentaries that I watch with my Dad. It takes the whole morning to watch one 30 minute programme because my Dad keeps pausing it to explain everything. I have also been practising singing as well (we always sing in our house). When my Dad repairs the guitar we are going to start singing songs together – we might call our family band, Los Donemaneros . By the way, another History fact: Cleopatra died by killing herself, possibly with an asp. In Numeracy I have done fractions, multiplication and division. These classes can be hard and exhausting but I can manage it; I am getting better every day. I have reached my first and second A.R targets and I was really surprised to hear that I was Pupil of the Month in Mr. Pott’s class of P5/6 - I felt very proud of myself, and my parents were extremely pleased as well. I also got gold stars in Literacy from my Dad and Granny.

I got 4 certificates on Minecraft code.org, and if I do well in class with my Dad then I get Cadbury’s giant dark chocolate buttons, which are delicious. But the best reward is when I get to chat with my cousins and friends on Skype and play online video games with them after school.

I like everything about Home School; for me there are no favourite subjects (my Dad is an excellent teacher but he is much stricter than Mr. Potts). I enjoy everything: Coding, Numeracy, Literacy, History, etc. There are some things in Home School that I especially relish; for example ‘school dinners’ are truly ‘delish’. I am also glad that I have trampoline breaks every once in a while. One thing that I particularly love is the games in Back Garden P.E. with my Dad - they test my speed, kicking and throwing skills. I am also really getting into Coding. We never really did Coding in DPS, and maybe I should put that in the Suggestion Box when we come back to school. I like that Home School is where you do stuff that school doesn’t and that some of the things that my parents do are very different to what we do in DPS. The Back Garden P.E has dodgeball and games that we made up ourselves like the Coopcapkay Basketball.

What I miss about school is Afterschool Club, friendships, the different A.R books in the Library and other things that I can’t really remember, or I can’t really explain. What I like about school is that you can have rewards like Pupil of the Week and Pupil of the Month, but mostly to me it’s the friendships you have with each other. What I like about Home School are the trampoline jumps (which I think count as school because I learned how to handstand) and doing Coding classes. I love school and Home School equally and I think both of them are great experiences for learning. I also think it’s good that kids can still be active and still be learning in such tough times and the fact that this giant world Coronavirus problem is not getting everyone down (except for the ones who have it. And their family and friends of course). Well that’s my opinion.

By Eirinn P5