How Business Owners Can Homeschool Their Children This Period
Due to the recent scourge of the COVID 19 pandemic, children and adults have been sent home from their usual activities. Streets, restaurants, malls, bars are all closed, all and sundry have been driven into the safety of their homes.
According to Edutopia, without reinforcement or connection to prior knowledge, information is quickly forgotten. Roughly 56% in one hour, 66% after a day and 75% after six days. Children would most likely forget most of the things they have been taught and make little or no progress academically during this stay at home period.
However, proactive parents would not allow this to become the fate of their children. Homeschooling is the way to go in these trying times. This would also help a great deal to distract the minds of both parents and children from the fear travelling all over the news and streets concerning the pandemic. Academic activities may just be the necessary addition to your routine that would yield the most fruits. Every step in life has a ‘how’ to it and that is what we would be discussing in this article.
1. CREATE YOUR HOMESCHOOLING SPACE
For this you have to turn a portion of your house to a classroom if you must give them a sense of seriousness concerning the new schooling method. Parents who previously took their children’s take-home assignments seriously would find this way easier than those who have been nonchalant over the years. You certainly cannot be teaching near a pot of steaming hot jollof rice or in the toilet. It is therefore important to create this space and equip it appropriately. Children still have a low attention span and to keep them focused would definitely require a controlled environment.
2. HAVE A DEFINED SCHEDULE
No 7 year old would listen to any tutorial of yours by 11 pm or 4 am, so it is only realistic to have a schedule that can actually work for them. Certain hours of the day are more suitable for certain kinds of activities. Purchase a plan book and consider how you want to break up your child’s academic schedule and each subject you want to work on. Children differ therefore you cannot be too rigid about certain things. You adjust some things as the needs of your child evolve.
3. SET SPECIFIC GOALS FOR YOUR HOMESCHOOL
If you are going to take this home school thing serious, then you must have goals; what you intend to achieve long term and short term. If you fail to plan, you definitely plan to fail. If you are going to see any improvements in your child you must at least have a benchmark or an idea of what you would like that child to achieve after certain classes. This is the only way to make significant progress. Without a set of specific goals, you would only end up going in circles.
4. MAKE EFFORT TO BE A GOOD TEACHER
You need to accept the fact that being your child’s teacher will not exactly be a bed of roses but you can do it and most importantly you care about this child that in itself qualifies you to be a good teacher. However, no one can teach what they know nothing about so you have to make some research, read a book or more, get advice from others who have successfully established a home school for their children. With the passion to see improvements, you should be just fine.
5. MAKE IT FUN
You remember that English teacher no one paid attention to or the math’s teacher whose dry jokes you dreaded so much or even the science teacher whose teaching technique confused you more than the subject he taught. Dear parent, DON’T BE THAT TEACHER!!! No one enjoys a boring class, not even you. Don’t let your child contemplate running away from home because of how dreadful your classes are. Make it fun, children appreciate that a lot.
Homeschooling can be effective but there is a ‘how’ to it. Pandemic or not, if you decide to adopt this method of education for your child, the above-mentioned tips would go a long way.
