Learner Dad: Is there any point in teaching kids how to write with a pencil and paper?

Picture: iStock 

THE 5km rule means we’re seeing a lot of ponds. In Cork, that means the Atlantic Pond and The Lough are on rotation if we want to get out and stretch our legs. They’re nice enough but you’d miss Gougane Barra and Kinsale. Anyway, I had the kids in the car when I called into the butcher near the Lough recently, at dusk. 

We hadn’t planned to do a walk until we noticed a crowd - socially distanced - along the east side of the pond. The Lough had frozen over. Five minutes later, I was pulling chunks of ice out so the kids could skim them across the lake. Everyone else was doing it too. It was like that scene from the end of a 1940's Hollywood movie when the whole town realises that life isn’t that bad after all. We went home with puce hands, delighted with ourselves. 

Gougane Barra will still be there when the lockdown lifts – in the meantime, a couple of ponds will do the trick.

Up and down: 

Week one of home-schooling was a bit stressful but we’re getting the hang of it now. The main stress as far as I can see is uploading your child’s work to Seesaw. For the uninitiated,  Seesaw is the online platform where your kids are assigned work by the teacher and then upload that work once it is completed.

 In fairness, it's is well thought out and easy to use, with the added advantage that everything is in the one place, so you’re not rooting through emails to find out what page they need to colour in today. The only issue is uploading the completed stuff from a workbook or copybook so the teacher can correct it.

 If, like us, your kids are doing the work on a PC,  this involves positioning the book in front of the webcam and taking a photo, which is tricky to do without including a photo of yourself in the background saying the F-word, because it’s hard to hold the book in the right place and we’re all tired. 

My guess is the teachers are getting a good laugh from Angry Parent Face. And to be honest, they deserve a laugh. 

I hadn’t thought about this until my wife pointed it out, but a lot of teachers have young kids of their own, who they are home-schooling and minding every day. After that, they have the extra burden of correcting today’s work and uploading for tomorrow. We owe them one.

Picture: iStock 

Handwriting: 

Is there any point in teaching kids how to write with a pencil and paper any more? Put it this way, when was the last time you had to write more than two sentences with a pen?

 I write the odd shopping list but that’s because it’s faster than typing  into a phone. I only do this if I’m doing the shopping myself because my handwriting is something you’d expect from a drunk guy on a bike. Everything else is done with a keyboard on a PC or phone. 

Watching my kids doing some school work on a PC makes  me wonder if they’ll ever use a pen in later life. Voice-to-text technology is decent now – by the time they get older they’ll be able to store their shopping list on a device embedded in their ear. So I’m not that bothered if they do a sloppy letter ‘f’ now, or turn an ‘s’ the wrong way around. My wife (and co-teacher) thinks it would be terrible if the art of handwriting was to die out. I must have a word with her in the staff room.

Spring watch: 

The kids are playing out the back as I write, for the first time in 2021. There was still a spit of light around at 5pm yesterday evening. I’ve stopped wearing a thermal vest. 

January plays this trick every year, suggesting that spring is going to come early. At which point February and March step in with the second blast of winter. 

I’m happy to play along with January for now though, I’ve had enough of winter for a while.