Homeschooling During the Coronavirus

Homeschool families are used to having some flexibility in their day. If you get a nice day after several rainy days you may take the afternoon to go for a long walk and maybe add some nature study along the way. The school work can be done another day. Homeschooling hours do not necessarily line up with "traditional" school hours, especially if the parent responsible for the bulk of the homeschooling also works part- or full-time.

Currently we are in an interesting situation. With most of us stuck at home (including our peers with kids in traditional schools) we are all looking for ways to not go stir crazy between school work and regular household duties. (Still, go out for those walks on those nice days, it's good for you!)

I hope to create a series of posts here on the blog to share some ideas from our St. Joseph Homeschool Association members to help all of us through these interesting times. We hope these ideas will benefit not just homeschoolers but also our family and friends who suddenly have kids at home 24/7, juggling their own work commitments and the kids' schoolwork while possibly having a toddler or baby to care for too. 

As a quick start to this series, one of our members sent a couple good suggestions to me about keeping a routine. Whatever routine you may have had in the past might not be working now under these new circumstances. If it is, great!! If not, time to establish one. 

Our member's suggestion was to keep a steady routine. Make sure everyone gets up and dressed, and has breakfast at a regular time. Start your school work, take regular breaks (especially if you have little ones) for play, relaxation, etc. Breaks help reset the mind, which is good for all of us. If you also have work to do yourself, set a routine that works with your children's school work. Can you work alongside them as they do their work? Or maybe you need to only work when they have breaks? Come up with a plan and then stick to it. 

I hope you'll come back to our blog and check out more of our posts. We hope these posts will help those of you who are home with your children and managing their school work for the first time. If you have questions or things you think we can address, please add a comment and we'll try and answer it through one of our posts. 

In the meantime, I found this article on CatholicMom that I thought would interest our readers as well: Are You Suddenly a Stay-at-Home Mom?