Planning the children’s day, how to make the most out of this difficult time with your family?
With schools closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, parents and children up and down the country are having to adapt to a new way of life.
In this article, we’ll give you some tips and tricks to help you to keep your children happy, healthy and enjoying their time at home.
Keep your school-time routine
It can be very easy to let the normal weekday timetable slip, when you’re faced with the prospect of spending days on end in your house.
While there’s nothing wrong with changing things to suit your family (no-one expects you to spend 9am to 3pm in a classroom environment), it’s best to try to stick to a routine.
Getting up at the same time every weekday and doing set activities at specific times can help your children to feel more settled. It can be helpful to have a timetable pinned to your wall for the days that lie ahead, so your children know what to expect.
Adapt learning to suit your children
Teachers train for years in order to be able to educate your children. Don’t put unnecessary pressure on yourself by thinking that you are going to be able to step directly into a teacher’s shoes and educate your children the way that they do.
There are lots of educational resources out there that can help (BBC bitesize, for example), but you can use your imagination to make activities at home which are fun and engaging for your children, as well as educational. Take baking a cake, for example. They have to read and understand the recipe and weigh out the ingredients. They may even have to adapt a recipe and calculate new quantities if it makes 24 biscuits, for example, and you only want to make 12.
If your child enjoys screen time, documentaries are a great way of bringing history to life.
Accept that you’re not going to have the time to be a full-time teacher, a parent and to keep your house tidy with everyone at home. Use household tasks, such as planning and making dinner, to help your children learn about healthy eating and cooking.
Remember to keep up physical exercise too, as it is really important for both their physical and mental wellbeing.
Set up playdates
Like us, children will miss their friends. Set up playdates on apps like Houseparty or FaceTime to give your children time with their classmates.
While it’s difficult to find the positives in a pandemic, try and enjoy this time with your children. When this passes (and it will) these memories of time spent at home with our children are something that many of us will treasure for years to come.