5 tips for parents to teach kids at home during Coronavirus lockdown
Here are 5 homeschooling tips for parents during this Coronavirus lockdown that can make learning at home a fun experience for kids.
The Coronavirus pandemic has already claimed over 14,000 lives worldwide and is not showing signs of slowing down. This has caused public movement to come to a halt as quarantine measures are being taken to slow the spread of Covid-19 all around the world.
This is definitely putting a big dent on education as not only have all exams been postponed, including board exams, schools have also been temporarily shut across the world to encourage social distancing and protect children and students.
At such a time, proper homeschooling measures must be taken to keep learning at home fun and productive for kids. Parents are now trying to come up with ways that can keep children mentally engaged even though they wouldn’t be going to school for a long time.
Here are a few homeschooling tips to make learning at home a fun activity during the Coronavirus lockdown:
1. Make a daily routine for your kids
Make a pretty daily routine for fuin learning during this Coronavirus lockdown.
When children go to school, the majority of their time is spent in a proper schedule. During this Coronavirus lockdown, kids are unable to maintain a routine in their daily lives as they don’t have to go to school.
As a number one homeschooling tip, parents should ensure that they sit down with their kids and create their own routine to follow at home.
If the child gets bored with the routine, change it in a week again!
A proper routine helps a child’s body clock adjust in a manner that their eating, sleeping, learning and playing times remain fixed. It is best if children are kept calm by creating an environment where they can follow almost the same pattern they did every day when they were going to school.
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If you make the weekly routine look pretty and stick it on the fridge, it will become fun for your child to follow it every morning.
2. Create a proper learning space
When your kid is studying in his learning space, he or she should know that the area is meant only for studying
Younger kids might not have their own room but that doesn’t mean parents cannot create a learning space for them to make them feel like they are in home-school.
If your kid already has a study desk, make it more homely as that is where your child will spend the majority of their daily time.
The learning space should be away from the TV and video games and you should keep mobiles away from there. Also, don’t let your child eat at the study desk.
When your kid is studying in his learning space, he or she should know that the area is meant only for studying. This strict association of learning spaces being only for studying can be built during the Coronavirus lockdown and will come handy even in the future.
However, parents should note that different kinds of learning spaces work for different kinds of children. It is up to you and your child to decide on how you will create that space!
3. Don’t spoon-feed your children
This is a major homeschooling tip to keep learning fun!
Since parents are not trained teachers (most of the time), they might not have the patience to teach children at home the right way. Often, to save time, parents solve the answers in their children’s notebooks and ask the kids to learn. But this doesn’t teach them anything.
So, don't take all the fun out of learning!
Parents need to allow children to come up with solutions on their own and struggle with textbook problems to develop critical thinking skills.
If parents spoon-feed their children and give them all the solutions without letting them think for themselves, it will not only prevent them from learning but also bore them during their learning hours during this Coronavirus lockdown.
4. Follow the prescribed curriculum in school
While teaching your kids at home, check their syllabus properly so you don’t end up spending too much time on topics they wouldn’t need for now.
It is true that learning new things will help children but since schools have been shut, it is best if children utilize the time at home to catch up with the syllabus prescribed at school during the Coronavirus lockdown.
Parents can coordinate with other parents of their children’s classmates at school to better coordinate with how others are homeschooling their children and which topics from which subjects they are tackling first.
Parents can also speak with their kids’ teachers to understand how they can homeschool in a manner that will help schools adjust when they re-open after the Coronavirus pandemic eases out.
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5. Give children the freedom to choose
Giving kids the freedom to choose what they are learning at any given time makes them more motivated to learn at home during the Coronavirus lockdown.
When homeschooling kids, it is important to make a routine and stick to it, but learning at home does come with its perks. It is very good for the individual student as in a classroom setting, a large number of children are forced to learn the same way.
When teaching children at home, parents can pay close attention to what their child wants to study at different times each day and include it in the daily routine you create.
Giving kids the freedom to choose what they are learning at any given time makes them more motivated to learn at home during the Coronavirus lockdown.
You can even promise your kids small returns for a great week of studying and following the routine but make sure it doesn’t become a habit for your child to only study for getting that gift in return as the situation is sure to change when schools reopen!
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Homeschooling can be a very fun experience for children as they don’t need to rush every morning to school and can instead keep a relaxed mind. There are no school exams or tests right now, and learning at home means they can get more breaks than they did in school!
So parents can follow the homeschooling tips above and make learning at home a fun experience for kids during this Coronavirus lockdown. Just give them the freedom to choose, don’t restrict their growth, and make sure you talk to them about the spread of Covid-19 and its spread of Covid-19 in a way that doesn’t alarm them.
