Like many kids across Australia (and the world), my 3 children have recently been faced with managing their school day at home. I think both the kids and the teachers do an amazing job in making this even possible, and have pivoted amazingly well, yet again.
I can see that this experience is building resilience and independence in my children, which later on I will be so grateful for, but right now, managing work and three children home learning, as well as zero after school activities, I am stretched and it is a daily challenge.
Some days the plan just doesn’t go to plan. The kids are restless, struggling to focus and the bickering starts creeping in. I know that if the kids were in a classroom setting, their teacher would most likely read the room and adapt the lessons accordingly. This could be a quick game to break state or a run outside, but they wouldn’t keep to a plan or agenda when it clearly isn’t working.
Given most parents aren’t trained teachers, this can be hard to do, especially since you are already short of time. But I wanted to share that REAL home learning is all around us, it's all about how you look at it.
Today, my restless trio had some “Real Home Learning” and learnt how to build IKEA furniture 😅🤣
Here is what they learnt:
📙READING - How to read and follow IKEA instructions.
📙ART - Reading how to follow and interpret diagrams on IKEA instructions.
📙DIVISION - When you open up all the components for 3 chairs at once and you need to find out how many of the parts are actually yours.
📙TIME MANAGEMENT - When you want to be the first one finished, so you start cutting corners to make it faster.
📙PROBLEM SOLVING - When your chair doesn't look like your siblings (because you cut corners) and have to figure out what you did wrong.
📙VOCABULARY EXTENTION - Learnt the word VERTIGO when they all spun around on their chairs until they wanted to vomit 🤣😆
Seriously though, the kids learnt real life skills today. By switching to a new plan I was able to quickly change the overall mood. It provided the kids with hands on learning, a feeling of accomplishment and best of all in a period where my husband and I are feeling stretched, instead of spending the day pushing through, they completed a task that needed to be done for our family.
Moral of the story is, don't be hard on yourself if the day doesn't go to plan, there are real life learning opportunities everywhere.
🧡🧡🧡
#ikea