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How to get through homeschooling hell

With the rapid spread of the coronavirus, so many of us have been thrust into a homeschooling role with no warning, planning or preparation. Whilst teachers fight to adapt to the situation, parents are thrown right in the deep end.

A few years back I was forced into a similar situation, not through a killer pandemic, but because due to school age differences after moving interstate my children were repeating a grade. Their boredom was showing and the school was unwilling to consider placing them in a more appropriate environment.

Homeschooling 3 children with different ages, interests and abilities was a herculean task, and my fantasies of focused children sitting quietly at their desks completing sums quickly evaporated. Everything they didn’t want to do was too hard. All of them needed constant help (i.e me doing it for them) and if they weren’t busy fighting, they were equally busy complaining.

It took some to figure out, but eventually I got through it, and my children went from average to top students within a year. I’ve since started Kids Clique using everything I learned, but I’d like to share some tips here for everyone going through the same situation.

The most important idea I’d like to share is that what works in the classroom, may not be what works well at home. Kids often aren’t used to following school- style rules at home, and many will resist fiercely. The best way to get through this with your relationship intact is not to attempt to replicate school, and to find ways to make study enjoyable and cater to your children’s individual interests. If the children are enjoying their studies they won’t even notice they’re learning.

1. Take the opportunity to get hands on

Unfortunately in a classroom of 30 students, opportunities to get hands on can be limited. Much of the maths curriculum, such as geometry, measurement and finance relate more to day to day hands on tasks than to worksheets. You can kill two birds with one stone by introducing some cooking lessons into your social distancing — life skills and measurement! We did cooking once a week, encompassing a huge amount of maths, problem solving and comfort eating. Here’s how to include it:

• Preparation/ Problem solving and Arithmetic — Find a supermarket catalogue or online shopping portal (or create your own). Give the kids a small selection of recipes to choose from and a budget. Tell them they have X dollars to spend on cooking afternoon tea/ dinner and that they can keep/ spend the change on something they want. Or have them work out how much to charge you for each slice of cake and work out their profit. Ask them to work out the cost of each recipe, and which one would give them the most left over and watch as they add, subtract etc in the hope of collecting more money for themselves. More advanced learners can work out costs based on actual ingredient amounts ( i.e if a 200g bag of flour costs x and they need 50 grams, how much does the 50g cost?)or work out percentage price differences between different stores.
• Cooking: Let the kids assist in choosing a recipe appropriate to age group and rewrite any measurements to suit. Younger kids can handle measurements such as half a cup (they can also observe volumes increase as you add the measurements together), older children can work it out in grams. Add in some problem solving for the most capable (Double the recipe, or adapt a 4 person recipe to 3 people )
• Reporting: While they are waiting for the food to cook, or after finishing their meal, have them write out a taste report, journal or rewrite the recipe for a younger sibling. Older children could also research traditions and cultural considerations regarding the meal, such as where the recipe comes from, how it was traditionally served etc.
• Serving: Make use of serving sizes and cakes to learn about fractions.

2. Make learning Fun with family board games

Every time I picked up a maths worksheet, my son would tell me it was too hard. He would spend 45 minutes complaining about completing a worksheet and 15 minutes finishing it. That was until the first game of monopoly. Suddenly a kid who would whine incessantly that he couldn’t add 2 + 2 was the resident loan shark, dealing change in seconds and keeping an eagle eye on every transaction.

These are my favourite games and adaptions for education, your kids won’t even realise they’re learning…

• Monopoly — make your kid the banker for some fast maths improvement. For older children, cut up some age appropriate worksheets and change all of the rents and property values to maths problems at their level to keep up the challenge.
• Uno cards or similar — Each player gets 7-10 cards in hand, randomly drawn. The objective of each round is to create the largest sum possible with your cards in hand, ignoring symbols. Players should always draw back up to their hand limit after each turn. For example if you have the numbers 2,3,4,6,7,7,9 in hand you can make the sum 3+4 = 7 or 9 x 7 = 63. Older kids soon work out that multipying high numbers gives you the highest figures and start to commit those timetables to memory. The winner of each round gets a token, and the most tokens at the end of the game is the winner. Kids love to get competitive…
• Dixit (works with 3 or more players) — Every parent, teacher and art lover should own this game. Seriously!! There is so much you can do using these cute and quirky cards. The game is incredibly simple. You have 6 cards in hand, and take turns to choose a card, describe it and wait for all the other players to try to match your description with their own card. The resulting cards for each round are shuffled and each player guesses which card belonged to the original player. Following the standard game rules, you can teach grammar by specifying different grammar rules to apply to your clues. I. e clues must be verbs/ adjectives/ nouns. You can use new word lists to increase vocabulary. You can insist clues are written down to encourage spelling… The cards are also perfect as creative writing prompts. I use them every day in my ESL classroom also.
• Ticket to Ride or Pandemic — Great for rote learning geography, these games are played on a map of the country/ region/ world and are perfect for learning countries, capitals and locations as you play. To add some history or cultural learning, have your children research one of the routes or locations they encounter in the game.
• Diamant/ Las Vegas/ Zombie Dice/ No thanks (Works best with 3+ players)— Teach some probability with these risk/ reward based games for older children. Calculate the odds and use maths to determine the best move. These are also great for discussing the perils of gambling with older children.
• Scrabble — Practise spelling with scrabble and scrabble junior. For younger kids, lay out the letters of their spelling words on the board as a guide and have them collect the letters to make each word in one turn.
• Pictionary — this can easily be played without actually having the game.Before playing, have your children use a dictionary or first words type book to find a selection of words. This is also a great chance to find new spelling lists, learn the meanings of new words or work with grammar. You then take turns to draw a word and draw, build or craft it while the other players guess what you have created. You can also play with lego or blocks for an extra challenge.
• TIME Stories/ Tales of the Arabian Nights — These story based games for older children are great for encouraging reading. They work like a combination of choose your own adventure and game. As a bonus, both are historically themed for cultural and historical immersion.
• Ubongo — A 3D tangram style game that has you racing to create the shapes using the pieces you have. Great for developing spatial ability and problem solving skills.

3. Make use of online resources

There are many curriculum aligned resources, mostly focussing on online worksheets, comprehension or games. I tend to suggest using them sparingly to keep up the interest levels and ensure they are an effective last resort to keep child/ ren occupied when you have urgent things to do. These are the sites I found most innovative and which kept the kids attention:

• Outschool https://outschool.com — Subscribe to this website for some incredibly innovative and creative lessons run by teachers from around the world.
• Math Prodigy https://www.prodigygame.com/- An appealing battle style game using math problems to launch attacks. Perfect for the game addicts.
• Duolingo https://www.duolingo.com/ — Use the time to learn or practise a new language. Almost every language is available and the gaming style format and repetition work well for children.
• Various sites — Have your child complete an online Myers Briggs personality test for children. The results can give some great insight into learning approaches and strategies as well as helping older children learn about themselves and relate to others.
• Book and Movie combinations — Kids love any excuse for a movie night. Offer them a movie as curriculum on the condition that they read the book first and have them discuss, compare and contrast the differences and consider the reasons for the difference. Bonus task — have them tell or rewrite their own version of the story or make up what might’ve happened had a key scene changed.

4. Experiment with items you have around the house.

• Take apart old electronics and have a look at the components inside. Learn how to use tools to unscrew and see if anyone can manage to put it back together. Bonus if you have any IKEA type projects available
• Find books your child will enjoy and take turns reading a page or chapter. Even the most reluctant readers can be swayed by books about their favourite topics (for my kids it was vampires, mental health and minecraft respectively which got them reading…) Comprehension is easily assessed by asking them to tell you about the story.
• Have a lego building challenge — give the kids some science based challenges such as bridge building, marble/ mini golf runs, levers, cranes or anything else that involves experimentation.
• Experiment with water. What boats can they build to hold as many marbles as possible, how does weight change underwater, what does the same volume look like in different containers, how does water flow on different surfaces, how does a paddlewheel work. Experiment with bubbles, marbling and mixing.
• Have your child design a treasure hunt for you to solve. Have them write all of the clues in rhyme, create a map of the house or learn to navigate using a compass for directions. Create one for them using language just above their reading level. They’ll recall the meaning of words far more accurately when they are associated with treasure.
• Fix, decorate or repaint an old piece of furniture or toy to place in their bedroom.
• Buy some seeds and plant a herb garden. Let younger children follow gardening instructions such as planting 2cm deep or 10cm apart. Let older children measure or graph plant growth against time and maintain the garden. Teach them to use the herbs in cooking.

5. Check out our range of printable fitness mysteries,stories and cards at https://www.kidsclique.net/downloads.html. Free content will be added throughout the lockdown for bored kids and their despairing parents…