Our state recently closed all of the schools for 3 weeks due to the Coronavirus. I know a lot of my friends are wondering how they are going to manage life with the kids at home since parents don't have access to summer camps for school aged kids. In our school district, the teachers are planning virtual lessons. Being a former teacher, I'm a little excited to be homeschooling my kids for the next 3 (or more) weeks. I thought it might be helpful if I shared our plan. I've been researching how people homeschool on a daily basis.
Step One - Create a schedule as a guide, but understand things may happen and it may or may not be the exact times. Kids like to know what to expect, what is coming next, etc. I plan to print a schedule and have it out on the table. Depending on your child's age and attention span, you may need more smaller breaks in between activities.
Step Two - Set the expectation. Every teacher will tell you that the first few weeks of school are important to set expectations and establish routines. Talk to your kids about school work time. Have them understand that if they work efficiently, don't fight you on doing work, they get to play the rest of the day. We also have talked about how we are not staying up late & sleeping in. We will be treating this like real school. I will let you know how this works out! 🤪🤣😆
I have planned for 45 min blocks of time for each subject. Our school is providing materials to do at home, so it makes things easier. I've left some space below each description to add notes.
Are you wondering how you can work with more than one child? While one child is doing independent work or needs me to work with them, the other child can be doing independent work, educational games online or silent reading a chapter book, as you'll see in my schedule. There's also an opportunity for the older kids help explain things to a younger child. Children feel good about themselves when they can help someone else. Sometimes kids can explain things better than an adult, too! So look for opportunities where they can help each other out and comment on their kindness and patience. I always tell my kids to think about how their teacher would help another child. What would he/she say? What would they do?
One thing that we have wanted to do is to learn Greek. Our family is Greek and my kids have asked to learn it. This is the perfect opportunity to learn a new language! There are many fun apps with have games and videos that make learning a language easy and fun. One app I've researched is Dinolingo (not the same as Duolingo, although that is also an option you can check out.) They have a bunch of languages to learn. Since we want to learn Greek we will be using a Greek specific app called, Ellinopoula. While I work on social studies/science with one child, the other will be doing activities online.
I will try to post some activities that we do. We have a bunch of arts & crafts planned as this is what we usually do whenever we are home. I hope this helps you out!
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