5 Tips for Transitioning to Homeschooling During School Closures
Posted on Thursday, April 9 2020
In a time of school closures and social distancing, a lot of parents are being thrust into the life of homeschooling their children. Even if your child’s teacher has put together a comprehensive distance learning packet for you to draw from, the proposition of being your child’s teacher can still seem daunting. Here are some tips we put together to help you get through this time stronger, and hopefully smarter, than ever.
- Know your audience. There are some kids who work really well independently and some that need a little more support. Depending on your child’s specific situation, you may be able to create a full day plan for them and have a few check-ins throughout the day. If your child needs more interaction, or is on the younger side, you may need to get them set up in an area of the house near where you will be and be available to keep them on task.
- Set up a designated space. Being at home can signal to kids that it is time to relax so having a designated area, or two, in the home where the teaching and learning activities will take place can help create a productive environment for the children. Find a basket or box that the children can store their materials in so that clean up at the end of the school day can return the area to its previous purpose.
- Create a schedule. A homeschool schedule does not have to exactly follow their previous in-school schedule, but creating a plan can help everyone know what is expected of them. It is OK to let the kids sleep in, kids and teens are notoriously sleep deprived, but try to aim for two to four hours of planned learning each day, depending on the age of your children. A great way to help with this is to break the day up into blocks and use your connected home device to set alarms notifying the change of blocks.
- Find their passion. When you are at home with your kids finding things to keep them entertained can be a challenge. If you can try to incorporate things they are interested in with their learning, you could find some success. For example, baking could easily become lessons in math (measurements), science (ingredient reactions) and art (decorating the finished product). Try to look at your individual child’s interests and see if you can tie learning into them to keep things light and fun. There are tons of resources online that can help you find lessons in everyday activities. A quick Google search these days will turn up some great options!
- Be forgiving. This includes being forgiving of yourself. This is a new, and stressful, situation and we need to take the time to be kind to ourselves and our children as we navigate our new reality. If you need to put on a movie or give the kids some extra electronics time to make it through the day, so be it. Making it through this trying time with your sanity is much more important than how many worksheets you were able to do in a given day.
The experts at Cambria® Mortgage™ are always available to provide guidance and answer questions about home ownership. For more information, visit CambriaMortgage.com or call 952-942-0110.