With recent events forcing parents to educate their kids from home, there’s inevitably been a few teething issues when trying to implement an organised schedule. At time of writing, we’ve just embarked upon our second spell. As the first homeschooling period was such a disaster though, we’ve been able to use that knowledge to (hopefully) avoid a repeat!
Here’s a handful of things we’re trying this time around. While I don’t want to jinx it, it does seem to be doing the trick!
Create an Atmosphere of Learning
Last time around, we had a newborn baby and two school-age kids squeezed into the same room. Since then, we’ve been able to move the house around a bit to create three (relatively) quiet rooms. No more clashing siblings and crying babies whilst they’re trying to learn. Just try to ask yourself ‘can I work in this room?’ If the answer’s ‘no’, how do you expect your kids to?
Bring Some School-Like Structures In
The first few days of homeschooling where a novelty to myself and the wife as well as the kids. As such, we had a bit of fun with it and had morning assemblies with other pupils made out of balloons with faces drawn on. It went down a storm with the kids, but we didn’t bother to keep it up as it was just for a bit of a giggle.
The thing is, once those assemblies started to peter out, so too did the children’s work output. No more were they at a makeshift school with similar structures, without assemblies they were just at home and wanting to relax. Kids respond well to structure and struggle to cope with more ‘fluid’ schedules.
Keep it Concise
That being said, you still won’t be able to fool your kids into thinking your house is just the same as school. At home there’s always TVs, toy boxes, comics and games consoles constantly beckoning the kids like a siren. We seem to find that our kids work well in the mornings but start to flag after lunch. With this in mind, we end their school day at lunch. This keeps them fairly fresh and enthusiastic. Nobody learns anything when they don’t want to.
Try to Keep it Interesting
There’s no better person than yourself to tailor learning specifically for your child. You know what they respond to and how best they process information. Because of this, don’t be tempted just to use your resources as they’ve been given. Change questions and tasks to include their favourite cartoon characters, family members or pets. As an example, if your family dog has 15 dog treats and eats 12, how many does he have left?
Do you have any more homeschooling tips? Please feel free to share them. We could all do with a little extra help!
Here’s some tips on how to keep them entertained when you’re stuck in the house too!
Try to get some pointers about their standard school day when they’re actually there in case you need to homeschool them again! Here’s how to find out what they’ve done at school.
Lumbered with that pesky class teddy? Here’s some quick tips on what you can do.