Yes, it’s true that during a pandemic, as homeschool parents we don’t have to concern ourselves with what we’re going to do with our children when schools are closed. However, we do have to make some adjustments to our daily routine.
The beauty of homeschooling is that we’re not confined to the same four walls every single day. One thing that I do often with my daughter is to take our learning to other dwellings. We usually hit up local coffee shops or either library 3-4 times a week, especially when there’s extra money.
However, with concerns about the spread of the virus. We’ve canceled all of our outside activities including her twice-weekly scuba diving practices.
That doesn’t mean that homeschooling has become routine either. I have amassed a collection of over 195 PDF books and workbooks covering every subject you can imagine from elementary through college. Additionally, I use documentaries as an extra resource for educating my daughter. Between, Netflix, Hulu, and AmazonPrime, there’s enough content on these streaming services to educate your kids in a variety of subject matters. My daughter and I love the documentaries we’ve found on African and African- American history as well as all of the documentaries on ocean life.
Last year my daughter started her own business, Little Miss Sophia Sweets, as a part of her homeschool curriculum. As such there are days where we spend the whole day devoted to her business. For us, that means her working on formulating her recipes and using the BizKid$ Business Plan Worksheets we have, to put her business goals on paper.
There’s never a routine day in our homeschool.
For parents whose children will be out of school but won’t have access to online learning through their schools, there are several FREE sites that parents can find and print worksheets for their kids to do. Here’s a list below.
- For math my go-to site is math-drills.com. This site is stockpiled with tons of FREE math worksheets for all areas and grades of math. And parents, don’t worry, each worksheet comes with an answer sheet.
- Another favorite site I love to use is TeachersPayTeachers.com. While all the content isn’t free, I love it because all the content is created by teachers so the content I do pay for goes to a teacher and we all know they deserve a little extra pay.
- You can also use this time to get your kid excited about learning a second language with the Duolingo app. It’s free to download. They have both a free version and a premium version. My daughter loves learning Japanese using the Duolingo App and she’s very consistent about making sure she completes her daily assignments through the app.
- Finally, If you’re on Facebook join a homeschool group. Inside these groups are a wealth of information and resources that you can use to homeschool your kids during this crisis.
Because I know what it’s like to swim in a new pool without guidance, if after reading this you find yourself still having questions please, by all means, feel free to reach out to me through my website at www.heyitsmeshanie.com.
