Again, your child, no matter what age group does not need to be tied to the kitchen table for 6 to 8 hours per day in “school”. Spend just a couple of hours for elementary level kids and 3-4 for middle to high school students per day.
Break the day up if you’d like. There are some advantages to having the entire day at home to spread out the learning for your kids, whereas a school only has a few hours to cram it all in.
Follow these simple guidelines to ensure a successful system:
- Begin first thing in the morning on full tummies. Right after breakfast, get started on some activities. It is much harder to pull your kid away from Minecraft later in the day to do some math problems. Your kids will be well rested and more focused.
- Use “afternoon fun” as a motivator. “If we get these three activities done, we can watch a movie” or “if we finish all 3 chapters, we can go play outside”. Teachers use rewards all the time to motivate kids and it is super effective. Trust me.
- Model for your kids, and then let them be on their own. In education, we call this “catch and release” or the “I do, you do, we do” method. The idea is that you want to show your kid what to do, model it and then let them go. After they’re done, follow back up and go over their work.
- Ask lots of questions. Rather than giving answers or telling them what to think, ask them. Say things like “how’d you get that answer?” or “Why do you think the character made that decision?” Remember, your role is to facilitate the learning.
- Make learning fun. Get outside, use sidewalk chalk, and find opportunities for math while baking, etc. As parents we have an advantage of being able to do a lot more fun things than teachers, like getting outside. Take a virtual tour of a museum, tune into virtual story times… the possibilities are endless.
- Follow a schedule. Make a schedule that works for you but then stick to it. Kids go through their days at school by following a very structured schedule. If you have multiple children they can all be working on their own work at their own level but following the same schedule. Your schedule can look something like this:
20 minutes of free write to get their minds warmed up.
10 minutes of math practice.
10 minutes of new math.
30 minutes of social studies/science.
30 minutes of choice.
20 minutes of silent reading.
I agree that kids need a routine and these are all excellent ideas on how to implement that
Yes to all this and more. Our kids’ school is doing an excellent job with launching e-learning with little warning and I start teaching my high school students online next week. While this situation is going to negatively impact our country for several more months, I believe that some good, lasting changes will come out of this. That includes in education.
Coming from a college English teacher, this is great! I don’t have any kids of my own yet, but my heart was just hurting for those who get so excited about school like I did. These are great tips! The important thing later on is that they can learn – not that they memorized X number of exact facts (although I realize that’s typically part of standardized testing). Thanks for sharing!
It’s all about routine! Just keep the momentum of school going for these kiddos so that the teachers can pick back up and run with them. Thanks so much for sharing.
Thank you for this! I started this homeschooling by trying to put so much into the day to keep them busy. But now I realise, it’s just impossible and to just do bits and pieces!