Kiddipedia
While we’ve become familiar with the COVID-era terms ‘doom scrolling’ ‘covidiot’ and ‘zoom fatigue’, I think we’re missing an important one:
Peacher (noun) – A parent assisting the role of a teacher.
Suddenly, we’ve become both. We’re setting the table and the lesson plans. It feels overwhelming, because it is. Learning at home is quite different from learning at school. It requires us to reorient how we think about learning in general, and how we approach the process with our children. But with school out for many Australian households, we’ve created three quick lessons to help parents ease the transition and best support their children (and themselves) during remote learning.
Lesson #1 – Plan!
One of the reasons remote learning can be so disruptive is because our children have suddenly lost their routine.
It really depends on who your child is. If they work better in the morning, ensure homework is completed first, and give them the afternoons off. The inverse is true also. If your children are particularly active, plan a morning fitness class to burn some energy. (Youtube can be a lifesaver here – simply search “Kids Home Workouts” and you’ll find thousands of options!)
Alongside the routine, parents need to set clear boundaries. These will depend on your own situation, but limiting screen time until after lunch (or a task is completed) can help increase morning productivity.
Most of all, include your children in the planning process! Find out how they like to learn at school. Listen to what they need, and adapt your home learning environment to suit. Reach a compromise and create a routine that works for everyone.
Lesson #2 Gamify!
Education is more than just pen to paper. It’s important to steer home education away from feeling like another household chore. Gamifying your child’s education is a way to do this. The options are endless, whether it is daily riddles, homemade weekly challenges or educational apps.
Platforms such as Education Perfect (EP) are built to fuel modern education and provide your child with a range of gamified and interactive lessons.
Thousands of families around Australia are using EP to do just that. Queensland mum Emma Grabowski explained how she uses EP’s Competitions feature to keep her children engaged and interested in the work they’re set.
“Each month they have the opportunity to earn rewards as motivation for getting through their school work. As points are accumulated across all subjects I find the kids reach their targets easily and are always keen to jump in and do some additional work in the competitions quiz section,” she said.
Lesson #3 Kit Up!
2021 is certainly the time to think outside the box. Take the training wheels off! Households have plans for fires and earthquakes, why not education? The world may have stopped, but your child’s education doesn’t have to. It may not seem like it, but making the smallest investments to your child’s learning now, can make a huge difference in the future.
While this lockdown will certainly not be the last, consider purchasing education software to use at home alongside school work. Platforms (such as EP) come with over 35,000+ pre-built and automatically marked lessons, aligned to the Australian Curriculum.
Set up weekly lessons for your learner directly related to their learning at school to help counter the backwards step COVID can cause.
Remote learning is at once traditional, radical, empowering, frustrating, revealing and, most importantly, not quite any of the above. That’s because it is, by its nature, highly dependent on the individuals involved. Most of all, it’s important to be prepared.
Plan, Gamify, and Kit Up to support your child’s learning. You’ve got this, Peacher.
