Keeping track of your children’s assignments. Navigating new technology and dealing with tech issues. Trying to make sure your children don’t backslide academically.
Between homeschooling, working, parenting, and staying on top of other tasks, you may feel stretched thin right now. Just as this time isn’t easy for you, it’s likely tough on your kids too.
With so much going on, how can you support your children’s learning at home while preserving your family’s wellbeing? The tips below from online learning platform Study.com can help.
Creating a healthy learning environment
Many schools have closed their doors and switched to distance learning. As a first step to help your children thrive, consider making your home conducive to learning.
You can begin by setting up a healthy learning environment, which includes:
- Enough space for your children to work and store learning materials.
- Multiple comfortable seating options.
- Abundant lighting with as much natural light as possible.
- A quiet, distraction-free zone with electronics turned off and toys put away.
If you can dedicate an area of the house to schoolwork, do so. If not, decide which family member will be responsible for various tasks needed to prepare the school space each day. Be sure to praise your children for helping to maintain their learning space!
Organizing the curriculum
After setting up a learning space, organize the curriculum. Be sure you know how and when the school will make assignments and classes available, then post a reminder of when you or your children need to check in with their teachers. It may also help to compile resources such as websites, games, dictionaries, and other information. Don’t forget your family and friends—find out who has the right expertise to help your children if they run into problems with their homework.
Creating a flexible schedule
Once you’ve created a learning space and organized the curriculum, make and post a flexible schedule. Children often depend on routine and predictability. With so much COVID-19-related disruption, a routine can create a sense of calm, making it easier to learn. Make sure your schedule includes time for work, movement, and free choice activities.
Fostering independent learning
While your children may need support at times with distance learning, helping them become more independent learners can teach them to stay focused on a task when you’re busy.
Whether your children are tackling assigned schoolwork or seeking to fill free time productively, take the time to review some independent learning strategies with them. Strategies include:
- Prioritizing tasks by making a schedule at the beginning of the day, planning to do independent work when parents are busy and saving more difficult assignments for when help is available.
- Reading actively, highlighting key details, underlining definitions, and making notes of questions and impressions in the margins.
- Using graphic organizers to organize thoughts, plan writing and projects, and study and memorize information.
- Creating memory aids for complex information. Try rhymes, songs, actions, or visual representations of information.
- Following the scientific method of exploration for both assigned and independent activities. This involves formulating a question, strategizing ways to explore the question, taking notes, and hypothesizing an answer.
- Learning through play. Encourage your children to experiment with movement, building, or creating things. They can also learn by playing a strategy game, solving a puzzle, writing a creative story, journaling about their thoughts, learning a new song or dance, or teaching themselves a skill from an online tutorial.
Tips for prioritizing family wellbeing
Teaching, parenting, and working—if you thought you were busy before the pandemic, you may feel stretched to the limit now. If you’re looking for ways to protect your family’s wellbeing and decrease stress, these suggestions can help.
- Hold a family check-in. Have a brief time each day, such as right after dinner, when everyone in the family sits down together. Have each family member check in, sharing something that is going well, a worry, something they need, etc. Brainstorm ways to help each other.
- Name your emotions and model healthy ways to express them. Encouraging your children to name their emotions and express their feelings in a healthy way can help them manage their feelings effectively.
- Acknowledge missed milestones and activities. Children, and ourselves, may need to grieve missed events due to the pandemic. Acknowledge their loss and help them find healthy ways to cope.
- Try to be flexible. Everyone in your home is trying to cope with unusual circumstances, and the stress may hit people in ways you cannot predict. Every day may feel different, even if the schedule is similar. Be willing to bend the schedule. Brainstorm with your children ways to cope with unpredictability.
- Encourage each other. Acknowledge what your family members are doing well, and teach your children how to do the same.
- Celebrate when you can. Celebration can break up monotony, combat negativity, and create a sense of normalcy. Be creative—celebrate events big and small in your home or create new holidays.
- Maintain realistic expectations. Your children are dealing with their world being turned upside down. And you’ve been tasked with homeschooling your children out of the blue. You may feel like you’re failing at homeschooling your children. Or that they aren’t meeting academic expectations. In our new normal, remember that “good enough” is enough, and everyone is in the same boat. It’s unrealistic to expect yourself to be a “replacement teacher” for your kids. And if you work full-time, it’s just not possible to juggle a full-time job with teaching kids full-time. So please cut yourself some slack, mama.
- Communicate your expectations. If you have to work and homeschool, your kids may interrupt you a lot or be restless, anxious, or uncooperative. Remember, they are just trying to cope with feeling uneasy and having their world turned upside down. Try responding first with empathy. (For example, during a meltdown, offer a hug and tell them you understand why they are upset). And then gently, but firmly, remind them of the rules and your expectations. To prevent interruptions while you’re working, it may help to let your kids know when you’ll be working (i.e. when they should be studying on their own) and when you can spend time with them. For example, a visual cue—such as a closed office door—can help them understand that it’s time for you to work. You may also want to teach them how to tell if something is urgent enough to interrupt you while working.
Sources of support
While everyone is doing their best to cope with COVID-19, sometimes, extra homeschooling support can help. Make the most of the resources available to you from your school, local library, and online homeschool sites. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from your children’s teachers, your extended family members, and your friends. Ultimately, they all want the same thing you do—wellbeing for you and your family.
A final note—if your child is struggling emotionally, reach out to his or her doctor or therapist. If you’re struggling to keep up with homeschooling and other tasks, it may help to get extra support from a licensed mental health provider. Many therapists are offering sessions through web-video or by phone. (Many of them will even offer short-term therapy to support people through the COVID-19 crisis specifically.) You can also get support through online apps. Hang in there, mama! You’re doing just fine.
Clinically reviewed by Shalini Mongia, LMFT, May 2020
Content by Study.com
Articles are for informational and self-help purposes only. Articles are not meant to provide specific advice for your specific situation. They should not be treated as a substitute for psychological, behavioral health, medical, financial, relationship, or career advice or as a substitute for consultation with a qualified professional. Nothing in any Article is intended as a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, healthcare provider, opinions or other information.
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