5 Ideas to Keep Engaged and Learning During The Coronavirus Lockdown

The Corona Virus pandemic has resulted in the majority of students being displaced from schools. The parents’ worries right now are: What will children be doing all day? Many are now scrambling to find ways to engage their kids at home. Students are used to following a routine, so for parents to make everything fall into place, they have to create a blueprint for each day.

Your aim as a parent or guardian is to keep them busy and learning as you attend to other tasks. Child development experts, home school parents, and teachers agree that creating a daily routine helps not only kids but parents too feel less stressed in the midst of anxiety and uncertainty.

Image Source: Readingrockets.org

Creating a schedule on what your kids need to work on to keep them busy doesn’t mean that you’ve to turn your home into a kindergarten classroom rather, adding a bit of structure to the days. This can entail many fun and simple activities that can help students practice academic skills in a more creative way.  Though not every method works for all parents, each parent, mostly those who spend all day with their kids, needs to try several methods and see which works best for their kids. The ideas below can help you keep your students busy so that you may never run dry of ideas.

1. Create A Daily Schedule

Jot down what your kids will be doing each day. You can use cardboard, blank printer paper or whiteboard to prepare what’s needed to be done each day. Alternatively, you can print an online calendar template and modify it to fit your needs. Engage your kids and decide what they will be doing at what particular time.

2. Start With Their Daily Routine

While creating the daily schedule, begin with their school routine and use it as a framework: You can ask yourself the following questions:

1. At what time do they have breakfast?
2. When is recess?
3. When assigned school tasks, what time do they work best

4. Dedicate time for play.

Once you’ve broken down the time for activities like studies and food, you can now fill the rest of the day easily. Consider scheduling enough playtime for your kids. Child-led play is very important for the kids as it enhances their creativity, imagination and invention skills. In your schedule, have at least 10-20 minute blocks of time dedicated child-led play depending on the age and play development of your child.

Ensure that your kids have nice toys and limit adult involvement. Accept play invitations from your kids but don’t feel guilty when you skip some as they need to play independently though supervised.

You can also set up a Jigsaw station where you set up jigsaws, lego sets, and sticklebricks, place on a table and leave your kids to play alone. This type of activity helps to improve their concentration.

A “Jigsaw Station” (Image Source: Simon Roberts/ThankFullyTrue)

4. Keep them Academically Active

There are many online resources that you can use to help your kids learn at home. Projects by Scholastic Learn at home are a great learning center. This digital learning hub provides around three hours of learning each day of up to four weeks.

Blue sky kids is a session that has been designed to help your kids attain their goals by providing a range of topics including coding, video editing, biology, physics and also anatomy.

The amazing educational resource is also a great Facebook group where kids can get resources for learning.

5. Introduce them to 3D modeling 

3D printing technology helps to improve the creativity of the kids. They will learn how to bring their ideas to life and apply what they have learned in the classroom in real life. 3D technology helps to combine problem-solving skills with innovation and creativity though it has the capacity to support all disciplines. 3D modeling gives kids hands-on experience and it takes academic learning from theory to practical based.

SelfCAD is one of the 3D modeling tools that you can introduce your kids to in order to learn 3D modeling.

There are also many steps by step tutorials that can help them get started quite easily. You can begin with the latest tutorials on 3D CAD Homeschooling and they are really helpful.

Bunny Model designed in SelfCAD. (Source: SelfCAD)

The above is a great point to begin from. Though there are days when one won’t be able to come up with new ideas to keep your kids busy. This time you can leave them to watch educational videos, or you can also tour them on museums, national icons, and parks at the comfort of your home through Google Arts & Culture.