As far as I can determine, these two are the only ones who are actually enjoying school closure:

 

I have now preliminarily set up virtual Teams Classrooms.  I have set up a Home Learners Classroom which all students are members of, an Intermediate Home Learners, for the Intermediates, and a Primary Home Learners for the Primaries.  My understanding is that the Teams system itself notifies each student/parent (through parent emails or whichever email you provided to the school office when you either registered, or updated on the forms that are distributed at the beginning of each school year).   The notification apparently also provides you with Office 365, which has to be signed into to use the virtual classroom.

I’ll be frank, it isn’t the most intuitive platform.  Parents and students, give yourself some time to play with it, and feel free to email me with any questions about it – please don’t hesitate.  I don’t know the timeline for you to receive notification.  Since every elementary classroom is just now being set up and populated, it may take awhile.  I’d like to hear from people when you receive your notifications, so I have an idea of timelines, and when to start working with it.

In the meantime, there are a couple of resources I would like to share with you.  The first one is Audible Stories.  Audible is offering their service for free right now and there are lots of great kids books available to listen to.  In fact, I have been listening to some of the Teen offerings and thoroughly enjoying myself!

The second one is the National Geographic Explorer live classrooms every day at 11:00 a.m. our time.  For example, on Monday, the topic is On Thin Ice: Glaciologist M Jackson  takes you on a tour of glaciers around the globe! Learn all about these fragile giants, and hear big and small ways you can be a part of protecting them.

For each Explorer Classroom, you can click on the Family Guide ahead of time, and it gives you a complete lesson plan, broken down by grade, as well as other things to explore on the topic.  On a daily basis, you can chose which ones to watch, depending on your child’s interests (or yours!) and it is free to watch and use. Here is the link to the daily schedule.