Home School Hacks

Anyone else been feeling overwhelmed with ‘home school’?

I certainly have – and I am a primary school teacher! 

I have an extremely active (reluctant to write) 8 year old boy and a creative (under confident) 10 year old girl. We have had good and not so good days over the last few weeks and are having a welcome break from daily school tasks for the Easter holidays in the UK. This is now our fourth week at home and we are becoming used to our new reality. I have been thinking about how we will manage school and my own work after the holidays. Here are some thoughts and ideas that will hopefully help.

Structure and routine are good – keeping a balance is important

Nobody is expecting you to re-create school lessons at home. However, some routine is useful for everyone. It is likely to look different for each family and needs to fit in with your own work commitments. Teachers from your child’s school are likely to set some English & Maths work every day as well as reading, times tables and maybe one other subject. But this will probably only be 2-3 hours per day depending on their age. Children also benefit from creative activities, physical activities (outside if possible) and some down time (and it’s ok to use screens for this!). Balance is the main thing. This may not look the same every day and is likely to be different for different children. 

We have found starting with physical activity in the morning works well – we were enthusiastic about Joe Wicks every day but soon realised this was even wearing out my active 8 year old, never mind me! There are lots of other alternatives so we now try to do Joe Wicks twice a week and movement activities from www.gonoodle.com on the other days or for younger kids try ‘Andy’s Wild Workouts’ on CBeebies. After this, we then focus on English and Maths tasks in the morning, with an outside play break, then lunch and a choice of activities they can do themselves in the afternoon so that I can also do some work.

All children are different - be prepared for some flexibility! 

Some days the maths tasks have been overwhelming for my daughter so we have had a break and she has been more creative with art. Writing has been a struggle for my son, so we have tried to make things more active (nerf gun spellings - read, say and shoot the word; or create a news report film). I have found that we cannot do maths at the same time as they both need help for different things. Whilst one child is doing silent reading, I can help the other with maths and then we can swap. Also my daughter in Year 6 is going to do more work than my son in Year 3 and she has needed to accept that her tasks will take longer. We are still adjusting!

Give children choices - motivate using their interests

It is good to have some non-negotiables for each day but why not let them choose which order they do them in? They can tick things off when they are done. Give options for creative activities (lego challenge, create a picture, use the recycling to make a junk model). Get them involved in creating a list of things they want to do and games they want to play – put them in a jar and they can pick one out during ‘Golden time’. Our school used to have this once a week – why not have it every day once the daily English & Maths tasks are done?

It’s great if you can use the things they want to do and link it in with their school work. In the first week of being at home my son just wanted to dig a hole in the garden! He literally spent hours digging and digging, excitedly showing us the progress he was making. I was happy to let him as he was burning off energy and enjoying himself. We saw on his ‘home learning’ from school there was a soil experiment – so we used some of the soil from the hole to complete the experiment. Then he wrote some instructions about ‘How to Dig a Hole’. We watched the Disney movie ‘Holes’ and talked about the story. He was excited about his learning because he loved digging the hole!

Not all things work like this, for example, he has found it hard to accept that playing the Xbox does not count as a ‘busy fingers’ activity! However, if you can link things together then it makes it so much easier for you and them.

Give yourself a break!

It’s ok to give yourself a break! Some days I have felt too overwhelmed or things have been getting me down, so on those days we have done the bare minimum of ‘school’ and the kids have spent more time on screens than they normally would, we have watched a movie or spent more time outside. On these days I have been reminded and encouraged that God gives us enough grace for each day and He is our strength and hope. Tomorrow is another day and everyone will be ok!

Don’t compare – social media is not real life!

As parents we put so much pressure on ourselves to do these amazing activities, but know that for every wonderful photo and idea on social media for ‘home schooling’, there are many, many more ordinary, mundane and stressful moments going on! Some days I love looking at ideas on facebook, and other days I have to turn it off as I am in danger of comparing my day to a snapshot moment and it is not healthy for my mind. We are all doing our best each day. Our family is safe and happy and that is essential to any ‘home school’!

Esther Jenkins

Primary School Teacher & Home Church Kids Leader