Quick tips to help students focus like they do at school
—Get dressed, either right before or after breakfast. Create as much normalcy and routine as possible.
—Provide a list of tasks to be done today.
Set out a checklist or lay out the pile of work needed for today. Put away everything else.
If children can’t see the progress toward completion, it feels like the work will never end.
Perseverance is more likely with seeing progress through the day.
—Set up stations.
Separate children with separate workstations.
Try designating one room as the quiet zone-place for worksheets, writing, and other requires paperwork.
In another zone, designate a technology zone or a hands-on activity station (crafts, playdoh). Setting up stations feels like ‘school’ to children; zones turn on their “act like school” brain, and it also helps with the separating siblings component.
—Don’t make a rigid schedule; just follow a routine.
Embrace your flexibility and create longer stretches of outside time if work gets done early.
DO have a routine so kids know what’s next. They feel unsettled if they do not have a consistent routine.
—Do the toughest work of the day right after breakfast, with free play/recess as the carrot on the other end as a reward.
—Screentime? It’s definitely going to get out of control. Lay some ground rules. All schoolwork must be done AND some type of household chores done before non-educational screens come out. Push screentime activities to the afternoon.
—Make sure your daily routines allow time for your kids to entertain themselves. No screens, no work, NO IDEAS FROM YOU. Let them be bored. Boredom is the catalyst to some real magic!!
We cannot just take what we were doing three weeks ago and expect it to be the same or to even work. We have to adapt to this new setting for us and our children and families.
Thank you Dawn Williams Cain for your help with this blog.
