As home schooling looks set to continue for the foreseeable future, the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA ) has afforded essential parental advice as in house educating momentarily remains a core feature of daily family life.
You are not expected to be a teacher so don’t even try – you’re most important job when it comes to your child’s learning is to show an interest and get involved.
You make a difference every day when you talk to and listen to your child. This is what helps your child the most. Have a routine. Make a timetable with your child – you know what will suit them best – they may prefer reading or doing artwork or need more physical activity – work out the timetable with them.
NALA recommendations
You could start with some exercise – Joe Wicks is restarting his online PE lessons from next week, to help families keep fit during lockdown – check it out on BBC.
Your school will no doubt send your child some learning activities to do so you should schedule in time during the day to practice reading, writing, maths, art or other subjects.
RTÉ has announced that it is expanding its educational programmes and resources from next week to help support students, parents and educators. From Monday 11 January, the Home School Hub (10am ) and After School Hub (3.20pm ) will return to RTÉ2 and the RTÉ Player for three hours daily.
Try to get in some exercise during the day as well – even walking to the shops to get some milk – it’s good to get some fresh air and get out of our heads for a while.
And encourage your kids to help out around the house – setting the table, packing the dishwasher, cleaning their rooms, cooking – these are life skills!
You can check out our website called Help My Kid Learn.ie It includes hundreds of fun activities that can be done in the home or outside. And best of all, the activities will help children to learn without them even realising it. All you have to do is enter your child’s age into the website and you will find lots of suitable fun activities to do with them.
“We completely understand that it might feel quite daunting being in another lockdown with young kids in the house. Let’s face it, it’s not easy to come up with things to do every day. So the first thing we would say is relax, don’t worry. You’re not expected to be a teacher. The truth is that since your child was born you have been teaching them to learn about the world. By speaking and listening to your child, by playing with them, they learn new words, and learn to think and to talk about their thoughts and feelings. But if you do hear dreaded ‘I’m bored’ check out our website helpmykidlearn.ie All you have to do is enter your child’s age into the website and you will find lots of suitable fun activities to do with them,” Colleen Dube, CEO, National Adult Literacy Agency, said.
