Learning At Home: A family's journey

On March 18, 2020 as the world started to shut down our little world shifted within our family. Fortunately that was the day I finished radiation treatment for breast cancer. My daily visits to the hospital were over and I would get a break from the Cancer Center for a while. I knew then that I would be likely spending the next little while homeschooling the kids, even if schools remained open I planned to keep my girls home for a while until I could judge the direction that the

pandemic would take here in Newfoundland. As my family caught our breath from the toll that the past few months had taken we prepared to hunker down and get through another storm in our lives.

Our girls, twins Megan and Caitlin aged 10 and Lauryn aged 13 my husband and I started coming up with ideas for learning at home. We made a list of family activities and individual passion projects. Our goal wasn’t to follow a set curriculum or schedule but to make plans for each week based on topics of interest and subjects we were curious about.

Our older daughter immersed herself with her music and continued to work on a school project over zoom with a school friend. She also did an online photography course and kept our counter stocked up with cookies and treats. I knew our younger girls were very interested in coding and

technology in general. I wanted to encourage them to expand on their coding skills. Their teacher, Mr. Sam Paterson was excellent in keeping them engaged and providing them with ideas for learning at home. We decided that maybe getting them to do some coding projects and put together some youtube videos would be fun. They would get really excited and engaged as we all worked together on a project. Sure we did some Math, Language Arts and Social Studies learning but the

Brilliant Labs Community TV show to support learning at home

b.Board learning project

technology learning was what kept them excited about learning.

I found I just had to point them in the right direction and provide support, encouragement and troubleshooting. Mr. Paterson was always there to bounce our ideas off of and we all worked together on our hair brained ideas. I felt that our goal as a parent and teacher team was to encourage the girls to be excited and passionate about learning, keeping them engaged

Megan & Caitlin make and share their simple machine made of recycled materials found at home.

and providing an environment of curiosity each day. My husband and I would have to admit we quite enjoyed our learning at home days. We are really hoping that the kids can stay in school safely this year but we will remember our home learning days fondly.

Brilliant Labs thanks the Au Family for their continued learning inatives & project contributions. Stay-tuned for news of Megan and Caitlin’s guest apparence in the upcoming first episode of “b.Brilliant” a Brilliant Labs production airing on Bell Fibe TV1 in the coming months. Brilliant Labs Magazine Revue Labos Créatifs

BY KRYSTA AU