Simple ways of engaging and effective home-learning

During this time of the COVID-19 outbreak, when almost all the schools around the world are offering virtual learning for students, most of the parents are finding it hard to manage the task of structuring the day for home-schooling their children. Besides, more challenging for them is to keep the children engaged in learning effectively and productively throughout the day while they are stuck at home for weeks now. Here are some effective ways that can help the parents in the process of making the home-learning engaging, effective, and most productive.

Making interesting learning spaces

Ask the children to be creative in their thoughts and ideas to design and decorate their learning spaces every day or every week. Encourage them to work on the projects from their upcoming weekly e-lessons of sciences, social sciences, ELA or even Maths. For example, if the children are learning about plants in science, they can decorate their learning space with the drawings of different planets or, if the math’s lesson is on learning about the shapes the children can build the composite shapes with actual paper to use as their daily or weekly theme for their study spaces. The children can even be creative to dress themselves up like the character of the story they are about to read for the day. 

Allowing virtual interaction with friends

At this time, when the children are not able to interact with their friends, in-person, virtual interaction can navigate those spaces, help them stay connected as they would in a school setting to make their learning fun and meaningful. Give some digital time to children in which they interact with their friends through audio calls or video chats. In virtual interaction, the children may read with each other, can watch a movie together, or simply can do a bit of schoolwork together. Even more, children can play some educational games together.  Know about some interesting educational games.

Allowing  some digital time

Do not be too strict on kids to not have any television time as sometimes most of the kids end up wasting hours watching useless stuff. Allow them to watch some educational videos or movies. Parents can mention TV time as a rewarding time for the children as a gesture of appreciation for any good work they had done. But, always offer them the choices and be flexible with kids.

Giving frequent breaks

Do not hold children to work for too long in a stretch. Give them some frequent brain breaks during the day to help them to learn better and enjoy their home learning. Some frequent breaks will help the children to bust the boredom and monotony of continuous learning and will provide them with the opportunities to develop productivity, creativity, and social skills. Some of the examples of the activities to be used as brain breaks are: Physical Activities: Animal Walks (Walk like a bear, Hop like a kangaroo, fly like a bird, etc.) See these videos for some fun activities 

Follow the Dance Steps 

Mirror-Mirror (Pair up and mirror the actions with the siblings, or parents, then switch). Other physical activities can be jumping jacks, wall push-ups, blastoff, etc.  Quiet Activities: Reading, making puzzles, creative art with playdough, drawing, crafts are some of the quiet activities children can practice without the assistance of parents. Children can experience with some short and cool science experiments also. 

Practicing life skills

At this time, children can be of great help to the parents in sharing their workload and as well as in practising basic life skills like doing the laundry, planting a seedling, cleaning the room, wrapping a paper, folding clothes or making simple breakfast, etc. See the links below to see some brilliant life skill learning videos for the children for all grade levels. A sudden swift to the unprecedented setting of home-learning came as a challenge for both children and their parents. As this new way of learning presents a set of challenges for both, some conscious efforts of the parents help children to thrive in an engaged and successful home- learning environment.

References

• Gilbertson, S. 2020. 11 Great Games to Educate and Entertain Your Kids at Home.
• Comic Kids Yoga. (2017, October 10). Jaime’s Brain Breaks 6. Rainbow of Confidence.[You Tube].
• Rocking Dan Teaching Man. (2017, April 14) Do the Bear Walk (Gross motor/Balance/coordination? Self-regulation/Brain Break) [You tube]. 
• Nineteen Daan (2014, December 14) Just Dance 3] Ubisoft meets Nintendo-Just Mario [Video]
• Science Kids     
• Life Skills