Home School Guide: Practical Tips For Parents And Teachers

Lockdown has confined us to our homes and if you are a parent your concern for your children’s education had come to halt as long as going school is concerned.

Take a deep breath and remember the quote that – parents are the best teachers!

Parents can straight away start from home-schooling, nothing is so stringent, all you need is to have some patience and some tips to do it the right way.

Here are tips for parents for a successful and hassle-free Home- Schooling.

1. Understand Your Kid, Then Fix A Routine

Setting routine and time always works wonderful, fix a time to teach your kid. It brings discipline among children to do things at a proper time.

Try to analyze these 2 points before you start home-schooling for your kids –

• What time they are more energetic?
• What boosts them naturally to study?

For me, my 4 years toddler loves to study after she is done with an afternoon nap, with ease. I have tried making her study in the morning as well but she shows tantrums at that time- but it may work for you. All children are different so is their study moods!

2. Set Advance Study Goals

All of us know that having goals is so much important as it helps remain focussed as well as keeps us organized. The same goes for your home-schooling tasks, make a time table, a sheet, some make it learn things, and work accordingly.

Make it weekly or fortnightly. For me, I made it fortnightly -for example revising A to Z,1 to 20, and 2 rhymes for the first fortnight of lockdown. Similarly changed it for the next fortnight and so on.

Something that I want you to be careful about it here – please don’t be hard or harsh on children if somehow, they did not fulfill the goal task at times.

The world is not going to end if they learned 1 rhyme instead of 2 in the time you specified. Take it easy! They too are under lockdown, it is not easy for them as well.

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ~ William Butler Yeats

Related Article: How Reading Is Important For Children

3. Talk To Other Parents

Everyone is a message/call away. We mostly have WhatsApp groups among our friends/cousins who are parents or parents of your kid’s friends/classmates.

Take time to reach out, or don’t shy away to take tips or check how they are managing home-school. You can at least get ideas and work accordingly.

A few days back I called one of my school friends who has toddler around the same age as mine, she said as she is making her toddler learn one new word each day. A good idea perhaps to start with!

4. Take Advantage Of Online Resources

We live in the world of Google, Right?

So, if you fall short of ideas, tips, or anything, just check online and you will get lots of stuff to make your children learn.

The only thing that I will like to share here is don’t get carried away with too much downloading PDFs and end up not taking advantage of any. Instead, do a little research, find few resources, and check what keeps your children interested among them.  

Take baby steps, you can’t create school stuff in one day. Be realistic and practical.

5. Take The Help Of Teachers

Teachers are undoubtedly the most patient people, it is their everyday task dealing with the number of children when it comes to classroom learning as well (especially toddlers). 

It is great to see that many teachers had come forward to teach children online (as per school management instructions) and many are remaining in touch with the parents over messages/calls(volunteer) for helping parents out.  

Related Article: 7 Online Courses Your Kids Can Do During Lockdown

Quick Tips For Teachers:

Though teachers are all-time good at making things happen, the sudden situation has brought a new challenge for them as well. Our little cents for teachers out there.

1. Record Your Classes

Instead of streaming Live try to record and then distribute your teaching videos. Children can check it access it anytime as per their comfort.

2. Make Short Sessions

Keep recorded videos short and make sure it is a video and not just audio as Video impacts more and grabs attention.

3. Set Reasonable Expectations

Try not to overload kids with to-do tasks. Keep it small so that they don’t lose their interest.

4. Make A Group

It would be better if you create you a group for your students whether it’s a WhatsApp group, Facebook group or a simple Hangout group to share assignments – for my toddler her class teacher has initiated this, she assigns tasks every day

5. Give Interactive Activities

Conduct some debate or brainstorming sessions to keep their mind fresh and active, for younger kids, you can assign them some weekend fun activities and can also ask their parents to share their videos.

Well, we all are coping in different ways, we all have our ideas and strategies. The only thing to be noted is nothing should stop our children from learning because they are the future.

What are your home-schooling hacks? Do share with us