@pyra88 We finished school two weeks ago, thankfully.. so right now I am enjoying summer vacation. We taught completely online from the middle of March until the end of the third week of May. My hips and back ached from spending so many hours sitting down in front of a computer! Usually I'm on my feet all day walking around to the students at their seat. I also spent my eight+ hours at the dinning room table with my two boys, six and nine.. teaching them while trying to work myself. Far from boring, instead it was extremely stressful. A six year old can only get on with so much work independently. Both boys had reading and math lessons online, but also had reading and math books to work through. My husband worked more with the nine year old while I helped with our younger son. I had them on a schedule (all planned out each night by me after they were in bed) from 9am until 3pm, with an hour off for lunch and screen time. I did the bulk of my work before, during lunch, and after.. with bits of time between when I could. I scheduled them normal subjects, but also included PE (kids yoga videos, football in the garden, baseball if I had time to pitch to them, etc), history, and science using books we had at home and then my own lesson like planting peas, watching a documentary on coral reefs, observing bees after reading about them, etc. We also did art everyday, like watercolor painting, salt dough, and drawings. It helped keeping to a planned schedule, and because I have a Masters in Education.. it wasn't too difficult to sit down and plan a daily set of lessons using what their teachers gave me plus what I knew they would be interested in and meet the learning needs of a six year old as well as a nine year old. I can't imagine how 'normal' parents are making it work.
My advice to any parent is make your kids read a book for 45 minutes every day and practice their math for at least 15 minutes every week day. That is what we do with our two, with the exception of the six year old reading for 20 minutes (because that is age appropriate, and because that is how long I can manage to sit and listen every day). They will be just fine, educationally, if they keep that up five days a week all summer. Seriously. And it doesn't really matter what they read, fiction is just fine.
Then you won't feel guilty for allowing your kids six hours of screen time a day.. as I try to convince myself!
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