TOP TIPS FOR HOME SCHOOLING DURING A PANDEMIC

I had to literally open my calendar and count the weeks before writing this, the count them again and check..as it seemed completely bizarre that we are now FOUR WEEKS into ‘home schooling’ due to the school closures in the UK. I’m not sure if it doesn’t feel that long because we had a bit of a break for (what should have been) Easter Holidays or if days are now just blurring together! But either way, it has been four whole weeks since schools closed.

I say ‘home schooling’ in quotation marks, as this isn’t exactly home schooling is it? One of our Facebook followers this week correctly pointed out that this is ‘isolation schooling’. It’s not been led by choice and many people are attempting to teach their children whilst working full time.

But nevertheless, what have we learnt from 4 weeks of attempting to teach/support the learning of our children at home?  And what advice would we give ourselves 4 weeks ago when we were sat down on day one about to attempt home school?

We asked our (very lovely) Facebook followers and here’s some of the wonderful advice they have : (Download as an infographic here)

If you’re looking for recommended resources (toys, books and learning resources) to help with home schooling see our recommendations on Amazon here

What advice would you give yourself 4 weeks ago when you started home schooling?

• ‘Find out what motivates my children to want to do school work’

• ‘Don’t let the guilt in! Limit how many online resources, social media ideas and friends ‘day in isolation’ posts influence your day’

• ‘Stagger the activities. We dived in head first, printed out loads of resources, planned when to do them and put a timetable together and that was fine for the first few weeks..now I’m struggling to come up with ideas’

• ‘Seize your learning opportunities and make the most of it when you catch them in the right mood to learn’

• ‘Give them plenty of down time too to do whatever they want’

• ‘Keep it simple, keep it fun, keep it short’

• ‘Some days it goes to plan and some days it doesn’t, just go with it’

If you’re looking for recommended resources (toys, books and learning resources) to help with home schooling see our recommendations on Amazon here

What advice do you have? Please tell us in the comments!