Collaborative Post
Prepare In Advance
When you are homeschooling your children, depending on what works best for your little ones, it might be useful to maintain some sort of structure to your day. Not too much that it is overwhelming for the children and causes their brains to ache, but just enough that it enables them to get through some school work and you feel organised and slightly less stressed from planning a lesson structure for the day. You could also print off any necessary reading material, charge up the iPad/ laptops for interactive learning/zoom classes in advance and prepare their lunch boxes for the day which saves you time when you could be doing something else in that hour. As a result the main focus on the day will be working through the necessary subject matter.
Time Away From the Books
It is a good idea to break up the monotonous cycle of the day with a creative activity like drawing, painting, a science experiment, or garden time (if you have one of course). Then of course there are the much-needed nature walks which are essential for mental health wellbeing and allowing the children to get outdoors in the fresh air and get some exercise.
You could also make it more engaging for them and turn it into a bit of a science lesson by identifying plants, flowers, and birds. Maybe you could print off a chart of various birds and get the children to try and spot them on your nature walk. They could either write a description or do a drawing of each bird. This will get their observational and creative juices flowing.
Look After Yourself
It is also important as a parent to ensure you also look after your own wellbeing. 2020 has certainly been a testing and stressful year for a lot of people with 2021 looking to follow this trend for the time being. If you find you are struggling to cope with both working from home and having to homeschool your children, which is certainly overwhelming, ask for assistance.
There is help available in terms of professional home learning and childcare with Story House Early Learning, if you find you are needing a break. This will certainly be the case if you are a single parent, having to deal with everything on your own. You can only stretch yourself to a certain extent. You also want to be able to enjoy downtime with the children like sitting around the table for dinner having a conversation and cosying up on the sofa together with mugs of hot chocolate and watching a film together.
When you spend all day schooling them, holding down your main job, cooking and cleaning, it is enough to want to go and lock yourself in a cupboard for a bit of quiet time. So do not struggle alone. We all need help at times.
