Are you concerned with how to teach your children at home? Worried about your child dropping behind with their school work? These are strange and worrying times for our children. While we need to look after ourselves and others, we also need to consider how all this is affecting our kids, and how we can help them through it.
We need to remind ourselves that doing school work at home is not like doing it at school. Divide your day into a few hours in the morning, when you and your child are fresh, to concentrate on curriculum work and the rest of the day to focus on other things like mental well-being and activity as recommended by Dr Justin Coulson. He says “Your kids need you to be a parent.”
The following are ways to support your child’s well-being and your own.
- Keep important relationships alive: this can be through phone, FaceTime, letters, sending a drawing to grandma
- Activity, movement and exercise: Have regular breaks throughout the day where your child moves, takes a walk, jumps on the trampoline, plays a physical game or gardens. Even get out your old game of Twister or draw chalk hopscotch on the driveway
- Work with your child to set up a routine that works for the whole family. Get their input on how they want to set up the day (e.g, when to have breaks, when to read, when to play). Having control over the day can help to ease the stress. Program fun things into the day as well
- Time to do nothing. Make sure there is down time each day where there is no agenda. Time to read, listen to music, lie on the grass outside and look at the clouds
- Kids need to learn something new every day. This can be from learning to cook, or making something they enjoy; it can be in the form of watching a science show on TV or reading a book about dolphins. Consider picking different days for certain activities to break up the week (for example, Monopoly Mondays)
- Finding ways they can make a difference: Find a way children can make a difference in someone else’s life, whether it’s writing a letter, baking a cake for the elderly lady next door or helping to make dinner. This gives a sense of contribution and empowerment
If you are finding it all too much talk to someone, your child’s teacher is a good start.
