Top Tips: Home-Schooling
As many working parents begin, or face the prospect of, home-schooling their children for a period of time as the world deals with COVID-19, experienced home educator Clare Emerson shares with us her top home education tips.
1. As long as your kids aren’t sat in front of a screen, they generally find something constructive to do! Kids who are used to being presented with a programme may have to learn this skill, but it’s the KEY ELEMENT to being an independent learner! What a great opportunity for your kids to get a head-start on this, whatever their age.
Now probably this will have to be learnt via the journey of “I’m bored”. I suggest you pre-empt this with a chore list. My children never ever risk saying “I’m bored”, because you are instantly given a chore. Have your chores ready; they will soon catch on!
Same applies for bickering. They will be frustrated with such a huge change to their normality, and that is completely understandable, but you will go nuts if they bicker, so I would suggest any bickering results in instantly being given a more constructive activity: jobs!!
2. Do not expect any work you set them to take 6 hours! School wastes a surprising amount of time – you no longer need assembly, registration, timed breaks, relocation-of-30-kids time, settling time and there are far fewer distractions. Plus, if they know they can get their work done and then do whatever they want, they are motivated to get on with it! Most Home Educators find that everyone is fresher for bookwork in the morning: we start at 9, before if they have other things they want to get on to. I need this too: it’s so easy to see all the other jobs round the house, or get distracted into other things. (The only time I deviated from this was when I had a “lively” toddler and older children who needed me to work with them, they did the work they needed me for during the toddler’s naptime). Getting the work done first means I don’t find myself realising at 6pm that we did none and feeling guilty!! In normal HE life, this also means we’re all available for meet-ups and activities in the afternoons; if this is possible, do it! You might have school friends who want to meet up, but I know the local home education groups would welcome you to their activities. There will be home educators near you, most have facebook groups (usually private), but some enquiries will soon get you into the loop. We run on a different timeframe to everyone else (why go swimming when it’s nuts at 4pm when you can do the lunchtime swim and have the pool to yourselves?), so you might be very surprised at how many home educating families there are in your area.
3. Home Educators range in learning style from completely unstructured to school-at-home. We fall about dead centre, but all are pretty much equally effective (see Dr Brian Ray '2009 Progress Report'). My kids do Maths and English every day and any other subjects they choose to study (sciences for instance), everything else is organic. They basically work til their brain has had enough, and we have just extended that over the years; you will need to find that happy medium. For little ones, it might just be 10 minutes of each, livewires might need to run round the garden 4 times and come back in order to be able to get their work done. If you’ve been working for a while and you suddenly have a frustrated child who is crying/jumping on the table/kicking off, you’ve probably pushed them too far and should probably let them go sooner tomorrow!
4. There are tons of great resources out there. Websites like Enchanted Learning and Twinkl are great for worksheets and blank maps to do your own thing with. If you have kids of a range of ages, look at Lapbooking – it’s quick projects that you can do as a family: each person contributing what they can. There are lots of free print-and-go ones prepared for you online, but we’ve often done it by choosing our own topic of interest, writing the questions we want answered on a topic and then researching each one and then present them interestingly and stick on a bit of card for your wall. Jane’s Games are absolutely brilliant for practical Maths and English games, I can’t recommend them enough.
5. If you have older ones who are struggling with maths, Khan Academy and Mr Hegarty Maths are both excellent online resources that tutor them. BBC Bitesize is also v good.
6. Read individually and together. It’s an activity we love on a cold, soggy afternoon, everyone leant up against the Aga with a good book, or on a hot day under a tree outside.
7. Copywork sounds so boring, but it is great for your kids’ handwriting! When they can pick anything they like to copy, it’s not too awful for them, but the result is the same!
8. Cooking and shopping are awesome for maths and comprehension. We have written a menu and shopping list (which also saves a lot of money!) and I’ve given all the kids a night where they pick (and cook) dinner. Obviously I help as much or as little as that child needs. Games are fab for maths, mental agility and team work.
Learn a new language or instrument! My kids have musical instruments out all the time and they have taught themselves off Youtube! At one point we were learning about 4 different languages in our house via Duolingo. It’s presented like a game and you can compete against other people for progress.
9. GET OUTSIDE!! Just because you are trying to limit human contact, don’t stay home! Andy Goldsworthy- style art walks, nature observations, roll in the mud, build a den, play football/baseball/cricket together, cycling, anything to burn energy! Dig a garden this year! You can’t beat home-grown food for learning, exercise, money saving and healthy eating!
10. You are not a slave! The family is a team! People wonder how I have all my kids home all the time, but the reality is, I don’t know what I’d do without them!! If the team wants to do x, the team needs to tidy/wash up/put washing on, out, away etc
11. Food is rather too accessible at home, specially if you do bookwork at the kitchen table! We have boundaries so I don’t have to be policing this the whole time: lunchtime in our house is 12 noon and not a second before (so don’t even mention it!)!
12. A lot of what we do is “conversational learning”: we hear something on the radio in the car and it sparks a conversation about politics or world news or different people’s beliefs or perspective. The car is also a great place to learn times tables…
13. The last thing I would say is to watch your kids. You will be amazed by how much learning goes on all the time. A lot of people start out with Home Education being very structured, and as they grow in confidence from seeing what awesome stuff their kids discover on their own, they relax a lot more. My eldest child excels at science, my second worst subject. My second excels at art, which is my absolute worst! They are who they are created to be and far from forcing them to be clones of you, Home Education gives them the opportunity to find their own specialism. I know this may only be a short detour for you, but I am excited for the blessings it can bring to your family!
Originally Released On 15 March 2020