Home Schooling through COVID-19: Stuck at home trying to figure out how to work productively and support your kids’ learning at home?
In this video Rory & Leslie Foster share some tips from their 19 years of working from home to help you stay productive, healthy & sane :).
We also interview 2 amazing home school families who share their insights and perspectives on creating great learning environments at home and capturing teachable moments with your kids during these crazy stay at home days and trying to do your best at home schooling through COVID-19.
A few of the tips and suggestions we talk through in the video are:
- Accept that there will be frustrations & cut yourself some slack
- Get into a routine vs sticking to a schedule
- Eliminate distractions when it’s time for creative & productive work
- Take frequent breaks with healthy snacks
- Incorporate end-of-day check-ins and line out top tasks for tomorrow
- Capture teachable moments with your children that highlight life skills & character traits you want your kids to develop
- Help your children identify topics over the past year in school to research and go deeper with
- Think of your family as your team, and how you can work together to accomplish your goals
Here are some of the links and resources that our homeschool friends Jennifer & Kristen mentioned in the video:
- Quick physical activities to get the wiggles out: Go Noodle
- Reliable lesson plans for all subjects (some free, most paid): Teachers Pay Teachers
- Science lessons for kids: Mystery Science
- Printable worksheets and study tools: The Moffat Girls
- Unit studies to go deeper into a topic & PreK and Kindergarten printables: Confessions of a Home Schooler
- Great Spanish activities & lessons for elementary ages. Free trial: Calico Spanish
- National Geographic for kids: Kids.NationalGeographic.com
Dear Rory and Leslie,
Thank you for putting this resource together to help through these tough times. I passed on this link to my colleagues in the education field and I am sure they greatly appreciate it. On their behalf, I thank you very much for your thoughtfulness and kind support to educators and homeschooling parents.
After homeschooling for many years, becoming a room teacher in K-8, then Arabic in several institutions including STARTALK intensive summer programs, I switched to online instruction and have been working from home for a long time now. My online teaching job has provided me with a clear understanding of what it takes to teach effectively online. Therefore, I particularly appreciate your work and the resource you have offered.
Sincerely,
Thank you Zakia for your comments! It sounds like you have some great experience also. Any other tips you would like to share?
Thank you Fosters for putting together this video with great tips and honest recommendations as we work through this time together. The Rubles and Milburns added a lot of value as well. I’ve been homeschooling my middle schooler for a couple years and it has been wonderful; however, she has had to adjust to me homeschooling my 2nd grader as well. It took a couple days to work through the changes but it is now going well. I focus my first 2 hours after breakfast with my son and help him navigate on-line learning. My daughter does independent work at that time. Then I switch to subjects she and I need to do together or I need to support her on. That way, everyone feels like they have my undivided attention. I’ve also found that on-line learning is more difficult with elementary aged children than workbooks, at least for us. It takes longer to format text boxes, edit responses, etc. We are working through this by utilizing paper and pen and then taking pictures of our work and submitting those instead. We focus on math and language arts provided by the district and added geography as well as cursive writing to our day. My son loves to learn about our world and is able to dig deeper in areas he is most interested in. We utilize National Geographic for Kids on line to learn more about places or even National Geographic videos. Both have been a lot of fun to explore together. I purchased a cursive workbook through Amazon and he is loving it. Both kids take activity breaks via Just Dance and daily walks as a family. My son finishes his work before lunch and is then able to create, chat online with his friends, read, or play games. My daughter (when focused) is done around 3:00. I’m able to work near her online during the day and we all take a break for a bit each afternoon. It’s not a perfect science but we are figuring this out as we go along and we are grateful for the time together as a family. -E Molina
Hey Elizabeth! Thanks for sharing your great ideas and experiences as well! I’ll be sure to add Nat’l Geographic website to the post as well. Please post any additional links here in the comments!