Skip to main content

Tips & Tricks: Tips for Temp Homeschoolers

With many schools being closed for a month or in some cases longer I thought it’d be a good idea to give y’all some ideas on what you can do. Don’t feel like you have to do school related things right away. Take a week off to reconnect with your kids and family. They maybe worried and scared already so let them relax and adjust to staying at home 24/7. Below you’ll find ages and ideas on what to do with them.

Preschool:
  • Let them be kids. I didn’t know anything when I started elementary. I learned it all while in school.
  • Their are many few things online to help: Khan Academy, ABCMouse, a bunch of printables on Teachers Pay Teachers, etc. 
  • Everyday life can be lessons without your kids knowing: baking, folding laundry, Madd Mattr (way better than Play Doh), etc.
  • Play board games. 
  • Playing in the yard. 
  • Watching movies. 
  • Read books. 
  • Science experiments! There are a lot of cool experiments you can do with regular household items. 
My daughter loves to help when we’re cooking so I let her measure out the spices. 

Elementary:
  • Things from Preschool age still apply here. 
  • If you’re thinking that you can’t teach them. Guess what you can. You passed elementary didn’t you?
  • When reading books ask them questions.
  • Get involved with them. Ask them what they’d like to do around the house. 
  • Start a garden. 
  • Act out a favorite movie. 
  • Some teachers have created packets so look at your schools website and see if their teacher has made one or left any notes on what to work on. 
  • Science experiments! There are a lot of cool experiments you can do with regular household items. 
    Middle School:
    • Things from Elementary age still apply here. 
    • If your kid’s teacher has a packet online print it out and have your kids work on it. Not to much in a day. You don’t want them to get overwhelmed. Remember they see you as their parent not a teacher. 
    • Ask your kids if they need help on something. Pre-teens and teens most likely won’t ask for help. If you don’t understand the work either sit down together and look it up. Learning is more fun when you have a partner.
    • If your child excels in a subject ask them to teach it to you (even if you already understand). It’ll boost their confidence and help them with communication.  
    • Give chores to do. They may not like it but life isn’t always fair.
    • Science experiments! There are a lot of cool experiments you can do with regular household items. 
    • Read a good book. 

    High School:
    • Things from Middle School age still apply here. 
    • High schoolers aren’t going to want to ask for help so get involved. Ask if they need anything; even if it’s just a snack while they do some school work. 
    • If your child excels in a subject ask them to teach it to you (even if you already understand). It’ll boost their confidence and help them with communication.  
    • Have a movie night. 
    • Ask them if they’d like to try cooking dinner. They’ll be on their own one day and need to know how to cook. 
    • If they are into gaming trying playing with them. You might not be very good but it’s a great bonding activity. 
    • Ask them about their interests. Over the years things change and teens distant themselves to be more independent so reconnect with them. 

    I’ve teamed with Timberdoodle so be sure to checkout other ideas from homeschoolers. Questions or comments post them below. Always happy to hear from y’all. 
    You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
    Click here to enter

    Comments

    Popular posts from this blog

    Review: Geoboards

    A fun way to help kids get great hand-eye coordination isn’t with  Geoboards . I love that with these there are 4 boards included so you can use it with multiple students. The rubber bands are different colors and 2 different sizes. The pictures are fun, colorful and you get a bunch of them. My daughter really likes these. For some reason she thinks it’s so funny when the bands pop her. At first I just let her place the bands anywhere to get the idea of how to put them on. Then we started places them just on the white lines in the picture. She always wants to do more than one so I let her do as many pictures as she wants. I do wish there was a blanket picture so she could design her own things. 

    Tips & Tricks: Grading

    When grading first thing you need to do is check your state laws on homeschool. Some states require you to keep record of your curriculum and and grading while some don’t. I do not have to keep any records or grading. Since I use Timberdoodle they have an awesome online scheduler that I use. It has all the curriculum that we use and in the check boxes I put the grades. At the end of each year I keep the scheduler pages so I have records. Below is how I grade things. I also do not show our daughter the grades or tell her them. I don’t want her to worry about getting a bad grade. When she’s in middle school and high school grades that’s when I’ll start letting her know about grade.  My grading system: Pre-K - 2 Grade: she will not see the grade E: excellent; no extra work needed; 100-90% S: satisfactory; give a little extra work; 89-80% N: needs improvement; give a lot of extra work; 79-0% 3 - 5 Grade: she will only see letter grade if she wants to know her grade A: 100-90%

    Tips & Tricks: Class Schedule

    How do you make a class schedule? When do you do which subjects? How long do you do a class? Does each day look the same? It is easy to make a homeschool schedule since you can school however you like. Since we use Timberdoodle we have access to their online schedule which over the years has been updated to be an outstanding way to schedule our subjects. If you do not use Timberdoodle I would suggest using Excel. If you know a website that allows you to create a schedule (for free) then let me know in the comments. The first thing I do make our schedule is make a list of all of our items and mark which ones I think will be challenging and which will be easy. Core subjects would be harder than things like STEM and thinking skills. Then I use that list to make another list on what day we will do each item. Making sure that not one day will be to hard or to easy. I like it to be pretty even as well as each day having about the same number of items. Some subjects we do everyday those are E