Hello moms! I want to start by congratulating you for making it here so far without losing your sanity, I know how hard it can be. But if you are here today, it might mean that you could be on the edge of losing your mind soon and need some tips on how to make homeschooling easier for you and for your kids. I am a single mom of three, where two boys are in school and my three-year-old, demands lots of attention. To make things harder I have a regular job on top of owning my own small business. Being in quarantine has made everything just harder for moms like me who have to work from home on top of being teachers.
Today I want to share some tips on how to make things easier for you during this insane time. I had to search, practice, and see what things work for me and my family and which things didn’t (you can also read the “How I balance working from home and homeschooling” blog I did last week here) worked for us. Once you start implementing these tips things will start falling into place, feel more relax and organized and we will be able to keep our sanity intact LOL.
TIPS FOR MAKING HOMESCHOOLING EASIER
Stick to a routine.
It is very important to create a routine and stick to it. This will be hard at first because you will need to see what things you will have to eliminate (forever or just during the crisis) so you can do homeschooling in that time. However, once you do this consistently and at the same time every day, it will become super easy to do. Here is where you want to implement a day, for example, Monday-Fridays, and the time you will dedicate to home school, like in the mornings from 9-12 or what I did 3-6. “Every change is hard at first, chaotic in the middle and beautiful at the end”- Robin Sharma
Let children learn at their own pace. …
As parents, we might want the best for them and this might include rush a bunch of work to them and/or have them learn fast. But we need to focus on our kids, and let them learn in their own pace. I have two boys and I can tell you they are absolute opposites, seriously, they are like ice and fire.
This means that they also learn different ways, my oldest son learns five times slower than my middle one, I can explain something to my oldest one time and my other son, answers from far away from the first because the other one never understood what I told him. This is frustrating, but I had to learn to be patient, take a deep breath and let them learn on their own pace
Show an interest in their work.
It is very important to show them that you are interested in what they are learning and what they have done so far. My boys love when I pay attention to the things they have to learn and show some excitement for it, they get excited with me. Not just that, but showing interest in what they did and how they did it is extremely important. Be kind, and don’t judge, understand their point of view, respect their preferences and like, support and cheer them on their work, while kindly giving them ideas (with excitement) on how to they can improve their work if they don’t want to make changes, respect that.
Keep active.
If by any chance they have too much work or non at all, keep them active. This could be that if it is a long day of work then give them a break, just like they get at school, and let them play, stretch, eat and breathe. However, if the day was free, make sure to not take the habit out of them and get them to do some fun creative work like coloring, board games, or a topic of your choice (I teach my kids growth mindset and how to manage money & business).
Have a calendar.
This one is another very important tip to have on hand, especially if you have six classes… per kid. Assignments can become a little too much and confusing and not know when to deliver the work to the teachers or which one is the one that is due. Having a calendar helps me to know which classes I need to give priorities and know when each assignment due date is are and keep those grades as high as we can.
Take advantage of the internet
Teachers can get a little too excited and give works that you will need a textbook for and have no idea on how to answer because…you don’t have that textbook. I have to go through that almost every day, I don’t have the books or resources from the teachers to answer their work questions, so this is when I am so happy to live in 2020. Google and YouTube have literally saved our lives during quarantine. If you don’t know the answer go look for it because the resources are there to make it easy for you, especially google, just type the question and there is the answer (way easier and faster to find than with a textbook), especially for those insane math problems, searching for how-to videos on YouTube has saved me lots of headaches. The best part, this is something we can do anywhere from our phones.
Set the place
I strongly recommend setting an area of your home for all your schoolwork. This will help you to avoid distractions like sitting down away from the TV and to get all your materials near so it can be easy to work without having to go back and forward.
I recommend always have on hand:
White paper
Construction paper or any color ones.
Glue
Scissors
Crayons, colored pencils, and markers.
Books
Also, keep the space organized and clean and let your kids to do that work so they can appreciate the importance of keeping a space organized during their work.
Ask for help. Build a community!
Something I had to learn is to ask for help. I use to say I don’t know, forget it. But the truth is this was only affecting my kids' grades, so I had to get our my comfort zone and ask. This could be whatever is more easy or comfortable for you like, having the teacher's information to contact them or to keep a friendship with some other moms so you can do some group chats or live zooms and help each other out on any questions or misses work.
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