#flattenthecurve Episode 10

WFH Day 8 of x


Man Jobs

In our house we are all very modern, very progressive. We encourage the kids not to see gender as a barrier to achieving what they want to achieve, we avoid gender stereotypes and there are no 'man jobs' or 'woman jobs'.

As part of this dedication to creating a fairer, more tolerant society, I take on my fair share of household tasks, and the wife ... well, well of course there are jobs that the wife will not do. The fact that these fall into what could traditionally have been called 'man jobs' is entirely coincidental. I'm told. By the wife.

Giving medication to cats seems to be one of those jobs that the wife has deftly sidestepped. For those of you who are without cat, our feline friends do not like taking medication and Jessie is on antibiotics for the bite she sustained.

I am happy to confirm that I do still have all my fingers, but Jessie does have 7 tablets left so I'm not out of the woods quite yet.


Death in Service

Civil Service Pensions have recently made a pension forecasting tool available online, and it makes for interesting reading. You can nudge up or down your planned retirement age and lump sum requirements, see the impact on your pension and lump sum, and start planning which of the kids you will need to sell in order to make ends meet, if you want to retire before it's too late.

The wife wandered by as I was checking this out, and showed an unusual amount of interest in what I was doing.

"Do you know what your pension looks like?" I asked, hoping to start a sensible conversation about prudent financial planning.

"I'm just planning for death in service" she replied, before patting me on the shoulder and waltzing off out the room.

How negative, I thought, she's fit and healthy, enjoys her job, doesn't smoke or have any dangerous past times, there's no reason she shouldn't make it well into retirement.

I'll have to try having the conversation again at some point, but she's been very chirpy this afternoon so I don't want to dampen the atmosphere. I'm assuming she must be settling in to this WFH/home school thing now. Which is nice. I think.


Science/PE/Maths

Since the less than successful, and with the benefit of hindsight, overly ambitious lesson of episode 6, I've relied on straightforward 'sat at a table' type lessons with the kids. But my confidence has steadily grown and I went all out today with a multifaceted, multidimensional extravaganza of sports, science and maths.

And it worked! The kids enjoyed it, there was no bickering, there was even some mutual encouragement shown, and one of them (Eva) actually remembered some stuff we did well into late afternoon.

We learned all about aerobic and anaerobic exercise, planned a number of activities to test their aerobic and anaerobic ability, investigated ways of measuring and recording their achievements, and then took part in the first of a series of practical experiments that will measure changes in ability over time. We dropped the push-ups when Eva came close to face-planting into the mud after failing to trouble the scorekeeper.

To the casual observer this may have looked like we were playing in the garden. To them I say poppycock and balderdash, this was education at its best.

The wife seemed less than impressed, and wanted to know what parts of the Key Stage 1 and 2 curriculum I was addressing. Pfft.