... it's Crisis Schooling!!
We are currently under lock down conditions here in the UK. Everything is closed, including my daughters school!
My daughter is nearly seven, she's in Year one and she loves to learn. She also has Autism, which has made our home learning journey just a little bit more bumpy :)
The change of routine, the fact that I'm not a teacher, the work I had manage to organise from Twinkl was nothing like she was used to doing at school. All these things worked against us, we had our fair share of melt downs (myself included!) I was convinced that these were going to be the longest days of our lives...
One of the best bits of advice I have garnered during this time came from a home schooling group on Facebook:
"It's not homeschooling, it's crisis schooling!"
Meaning, you can not fully undertake home schooling at the moment because you can not go out into the world and learn through real life. Normally, when exploring an under the sea theme (like we are this week) paper learning would be enhanced by a trip to the aquarium, to the beach and we would be able to go to the shop together to buy supplies rather than using online suppliers.
There have been some unexpected bonuses to this time at home. My daughter is calmer, she is no longer having to mask her autism and she is living a much more authentic life.
We are able to tailor her learning to her abilities, she is ahead in areas like Maths and Writing but she is younger in her free play.
She has flitted back and forth between never wanting to go back to school and missing her friends and teacher.
We have organised our day into 3 sections:
Worksheets/Academic learning/Write ins.
Crafts/Stem activities.
Family connection time (Games/ Movies/Lego all together.)
Its working well for us. My daughter has regular movement breaks between activities and lots of free play to supplement her "book learning."
I think my most favourite quote from this unprecedented time is as follows:
We are not all in the same boat, but we are all in the same storm.
I hope you are all staying safe, please feel free to share your crisis schooling stories in the comments.
Thanks for popping by. xx
Comments