I’ve seen a lot of people on my news feed expressing frustration about home schooling.

It’s really just something we have to get on with and a matter of just getting yourself organised. I’ve put together some simple steps to help you plan your day.

How to Homeschool in Lockdown 3

1. Set the alarm for 6am so you can do some work before the kids get up.

2. Tell the kids to get themselves up and dressed, and head downstairs for simple, healthy breakfast you’ve prepared the night before and some educational screen time.

3. Ask your older child to help any younger siblings with teeth/hair/pants.

4. Ignore the screams from the bathroom that indicate power crazed, overzealous brushing.

5. Ignore the screams from downstairs that indicate IT’S NOT FAIR, IT’S MY TURN NOW, I’M TELLING MUM and I’VE DROPPED THE NUTELLA.

6. At 8.30 head down to set up home school for the day.

7. Try not to baulk at the fact all the furniture is now strewn across the room for The Floor is Lava to accompany the telly.

8. Save the cat from a lava-prison constructed of cushions.

9. Clean up the nutella now on every surface and every piece of soft furnishing. Including the curtains. And the cat.

10. Re-dress and re-brush all children so they don’t look like demented ballet dancers and cause the school to call social services.

11. At 9am log the first child on to a video conferencing registration session consisting of far too many children and the pure essence of chaos.

12. Simultaneously attend a work meeting, while also starting the other child off on the day’s learning, using all 3 of the devices you apparently have at home!

13. Try to figure out why the microphone that was working two minutes ago is no longer working.

14. Ask child what it pressed.

15. It doesn’t know.

16. Tell it to use sign language.

17. Go back to the other child.

18. Re-login the registration child who has inexplicably logged off and can’t get back in.

19. Get another Mum on the What’s App to message the teacher to let the child back in.

20. Update your team on the priorities for the day.

21. Miss what the teacher has asked the child to do that day.

22. Ask the child, which doesn’t know. Even though the meeting only finished two seconds ago.

23. Figure out where the day’s learning is for BOTH children by consulting What’s App, visiting BOTH woefully inadequate school websites and searching for information buried under 300 random levels. This will take at least an hour.

24. At 9.30 log the next child onto a registration session, which has to be supervised.

25. Repeat steps 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 21.

26. Print out twelvety-hundred worksheets for the day, across eighteenty different websites and links. None of these will print out properly.

27. Break up a fight over who gets which device first.

28. Re-fill the printer ink. Which you don’t have. Nor the instructions on how to refill it. It’s now beeping at you and flashing red.

29. Ignore this until tomorrow, knowing you will hate yourself even more in the morning.

30. Realise you’ve had 3 missed calls from your boss because Child 2 is on your phone.

31. Set up Child 1 with it’s first task, which involves downloading a Powerpoint, watching a BBC Bite size video, and a youtube video, none of which it can navigate to or operate independently.

32. Set Child 2 up with it’s first task, which needs them to be on the same device at the same time, and involves a reading app which the other one is logged into and you can’t remember the password for, a maths games app, and a really annoying Youtube woman doing phonics who talks to children like they’re chihuahuas.

33. Explain to Child 1 that yes, Child 2 is watching the telly, but no, it is work so it IS actually fair.

34. Write a work report for 10am deadline.

35. Provide snacks to shut the children up.

36. Cry for the first time of the day.

37. Know it will not be the last.

38. Help a child shouting it’s stuck.

39. Help a child shouting it’s boring.

40. Help a child shouting it can’t do it.

41. Help a child shouting MUMMY just for the sheer bloody hell of it.

42. Good news! 25 new emails from just one of the schools, including with details of a new learning website/app/sharing platform.

43. Follow the instructions to register.

44. Keep following the instructions. Over and over again.

45. Fail to register.

46. Try to download another of the random phonics/timetable/colouring/maths websites/apps/sharing platforms.

47. Realise your phone is full because the children have been recording long videos of themselves doing The Floor is Lava, and nothing works, not even What’s App, cutting you off from other desperate parents.

48. Weep for the second time.

49. Take a work call, while pretending you’ve not just been crying.

50. Break up a fight.

51. Put Child 1 in front of a maths sheet.

52. Ten seconds later help Child 1, who is stuck. Already.

53. Try and remember everything you ever knew about long multiplication.

54. No, that’s not how they teach it at school, are you stupid?

55. Listen to Child 1 scream about not being able to do it, having not even tried.

56. Attend an external client meeting while doing this.

57. Set Child 2 up with art supplies to draw a picture and write a sentence about the weather!

58. I don’t know what weather, you have to decide.

59. You can draw what you like, darling.

60. How about snow? You can write a sentence about what you did in the snow and draw a picture of you on a sledge.

61. You’re right, that’s a stupid idea.

62. So is that.

63. JUST DRAW SOMETHING AND WRITE ANYTHING I DON’T CARE WHAT ANY MORE.

64. NO YOU CAN’T WATCH THE FLOOR IS LAVA.

65. IF YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR 9 TIMES TABLE WRITE IT DOWN DON’T JUST GUESS.

66. THEN DO THE COMPREHENSION.

67. YOU CAN DO IT. THE ANSWERS ARE LITERALLY WRITTEN DOWN IN FRONT OF YOU.

68. I’M NOT SHOUTING.

69. Realise you are shouting.

70. Realise it’s not even 11am.

71. Cry.

72. Pull yourself together.

73. Email the school about losing the latest password.

74. They can’t help.

75. Make lunch.

76. Clear up after lunch.

77. Prepare and present a lunch and learn presentation for 30 people!

78. Set Child 1 up on it’s next task so you can read peacefully with Child 2.

79. Lol! Don’t be silly.

80. Scream JUST WAIT and CAN’T YOU GO ON TO THE NEXT QUESTION and I’LL BE UP IN A MINUTE while listening to the torturously slow adventures of Biff, Chip and the other one.

81. Put Child 2 on a maths game.

82. Run between children like a slightly sweaty ping pong ball.

83. Ignore your phone ringing.

84. Mark a maths sheet.

85. Put Child 2 on kids Youtube. Tell it to be quiet.

86. Child 1 has heard anyway.

87. She’s younger than you, so she has less work.

88. Yes, well, life isn’t fair sometimes. TELL ME ABOUT IT.

89. Placate with snacks.

90. Child 1 tells you your work computer, which it has borrowed, isn’t working.

91. It has somehow managed to log in as a completely different and non-existent person.

92. Re-start computer.

93. Lose some important documents in the process.

94. Cry.

95. Attend to screaming Child 2 who has been scratched by the cat, who for some reason doesn’t wish to play schools.

96. Sympathise GREATLY with this point of view.

97. Shove it out the catflap.

98. Wish you could do this with children.

99. Comfort child.

100. Apply a plaster it doesn’t need.

101. Check your work email to discover you’re now up to 200 unread emails.

102. Miss another deadline.

103. Cry again.

104. 1pm – time to log Child 1 in for it’s next registration session!

105. Find out it has actually done none of the work it was set this morning and you’ve missed the upload deadline on the app you can’t download.

106. Give up on this child and do some number line subtraction with Child 2.

107. Realise it is functionally innumerate and despair of either of them ever learning anything or leaving home.

108. Update some complicated spreadsheets that require intense concentration.

182. Fear innumeracy may be catching.

830. Repeat steps 38 to 41.

990. Miss another online chaos session and send grovelling email to school so they don’t report you.

Q. Chair a meeting.

249. Put kids in front of Joe Wickes in the hopes of 15 minutes to yourself to actually get something done.

150. Listen to kids whine that Joe Wickes has a whiny voice and they’re tired/bored.

151. Break up a Joe Wickes star jump injury-based fight.

152. Provide more snacks.

153. Put on an educational Bitesize video and hide upstairs.

12ish. Pretend you don’t hear it turn into the Floor is Lava.

13.5. Oh, don’t forget to get them out in the fresh air!

*7. And don’t forget to squeeze in some enriching family activities like educational board games, baking, or maybe just a mindfulness session together.

450. Only do what you can, but also do it by these deadlines or your child’s future will suffer.

451. Next, make a delicious nutritious tea!

452. Try and get children to help you clear up the bombsite of printouts, cushions, pencils and snack wrappers.

453. Give up.

454. Put kids to bed.

455. Promise everyone tomorrow will be better.

456. Sit around and feel overwhelmed.

457. Do all the work you’ve missed.

458. Probably have another little cry.

459. 11-12pm – continue to avoid going to bed yourself because the idea of doing it all again tomorrow is totally forking terrifying.

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