Along with you, we’re closely watching the evolving Coronavirus pandemic, and if your child isn’t already at home doing distance learning or home-schooling, it’s highly likely that their schooling will be disrupted in the near future.

We know how you feel. Where do you even start with home-schooling?

The mere thought of spending 24/7 together can feel overwhelming. But, with a bit of planning that we’ll provide for you below, it’s doable (it’s not a walk in the park, but it’s doable).

Before we share with you our free and very easy home-schooling “curriculum,” some context:

You probably don’t want your child spending the whole quarantine watching TV, which is where home-schooling comes in.

That said, we don’t feel that temporary home-schooling has to mimic school with a full curriculum. Instead, we think it’s a great time to familiarise your child with interactive tools and activities that your child otherwise wouldn’t have the chance to use or do.

If your school has provided a set structure for home learning, we suggest you follow your school’s guidance. If your school hasn’t, no worries!

Exam Success has collated some fantastic online resources to make your job of home-schooling easier.

The best part?

All resources are entirely free of charge.

By the way, we’ll be sharing our temporary homeschool journey on Instagram, where we’ll also share FREE learning activity ideas and tips. So, follow @ExamSuccessatHome, and don’t forget to tag us when having fun with your kids.

Anyway, let’s start.

Where to Start When You Want to Homeschool (Temporarily)?

First and foremost, you need to set up a daily routine.

Think about:

• what areas/subjects you want to focus on;
• when exactly;
• how much time you want to spend on each activity.

It is super important not only for your peace of mind but for the child’s well-being. Children will likely find it easier to adapt to a schedule similar to the one they had at school than transition into an entirely different routine.

You don’t need to plan anything super hard – keeping things simple will help you and your child.

Our head tutor, for example, decided to only focus on the basics – reading, writing, and mathematics for one hour each, every day.

Here’s how her daily home-schooling schedule looks like:

Get a free printable schedule that you can customise for your own needs here.

Got A Homeschool Schedule/Timetable Set Up. Now, What’s Next?

The first day is a good point to establish where you want to start your home learning.

Make sure you set a base level, so the following days, you’ll just build on this base level.

Here’s our suggested home-schooling curriculum for the three areas of maths, reading, and writing (using free online learning resources):

Maths

• Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/math) is a fantastic free online resource that covers early math all the way through to high school math.

We suggest starting from the beginning at “Early Math” and get your child to do the “Course Challenge” first. This will give you an idea as to whether you can move on to the next level or do a few sections to cover gaps in knowledge.

Then, work progressively through the course together.

• When you’re tired of “serious” math, you can add some “fun” math with interactive games from Fun Brain (https://www.funbrain.com). From Fresh Baked Fractions to Math basketball, the website features educational games for kids in Pre-K to grade 8.

Reading

If your child can read novels, then this is the perfect time to get a classic book and have them read aloud to you.

Here are the stories on the top of our reading list: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland.

You don’t need to finish all the books you’ve planned. Getting through one book during the stay-at-home time is already a success.

• Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) offers hundreds of free books.
• Khan Academy Kids app (available for IOS and Android users) has 100+ books suitable for younger children.
• CommonLit digital library (https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts) offers 1000+ fiction and non-fiction texts for kids in grades 3-12. You can filter texts by grades, themes, genres. Besides, there are guiding, assessment, and discussion questions for each piece, making home reading classes a breeze. A tip: get a free account to access all the resources.

Writing

This is somewhat harder but also doable.

We suggest giving your child one writing prompt a week (alternate between creative prompts and persuasive ones) to create a short essay ~ 250 words. Then, throughout the week, you can work together on improving this essay together.

The goal here isn’t about churning through essays. Instead, try to take it slow and ask your child guiding questions such as “How about if we reworded this sentence, how would the piece look like?” or “If we cut this out, does the piece sound better?”

Need ideas for writing? Here are free writing prompts PDF printables for you to use:

• 10 Writing prompts for creative writing (PDF format)
• 10 Writing prompts for persuasive writing (PDF format)

If you’re thinking, “How do I know what to improve in the essay?” we’ve got your covered here as well. Use these “15 checks” checklists to identify common writing mistakes and find areas that need improvement:

• Persuasive Writing Essay “15 Checks” Checklist (PDF format)
• Narrative/Creative Writing Essay “15 Checks” Checklist (PDF format)

This plan should cover for 10 weeks of home-schooling.

We’ll closely monitor the situation, and if by any chance we’ll have to keep out kids at home for longer, we’ll update this section.

What Other Learning Activities For Kids Can I Do For FREE Online?

In our home-schooling curriculum, we’ve only briefly covered maths, reading, and writing. But if you do want to add more educational fun to your day, there are so many online resources for kids, entirely FREE.

Here are just some of the activities you can do with your kid during the temporary home-schooling:

• Learn a language. Duolingo (https://www.duolingo.com) is very intuitive and easy to use app that works on mobile and desktop. You can learn almost any language you want, including Mandarin, Spanish, French, Japanese, Indonesian, Arabic, and the list goes on.
• Learn to code. Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/editor/?tutorial=getStarted) provides a great introduction to coding for young learners. For older children, Code Academy (https://www.codecademy.com) is also a great free resource.
• Do more reading (because there can never be too much reading). The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/au/topics/curious-kids-36782) has some interesting articles for children who are curious about the world around them. Scholastic Magazine (https://classroommagazines.scholastic.com/support/learnathome.html) started offering a learn-at-home program with engaging articles every day.
• Delve into history and science. The ABC (https://education.abc.net.au/home#!/resources) has some great videos, texts, and games on a variety of topics.
• Explore podcasts. Podcasts are truly underappreciated when it comes to kids’ leisure time. Noodle Loaf Show (http://noodleloafshow.com/), for example, is an entertaining podcast that will help your child develop music appreciation and rhythm awareness.
• Organise DIY projects. Search “arts and crafts for kids” on Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/), and you’ll never run out of ideas. (But prepare to get messy!).
• Go to a museum. (No, not literally.) Thanks to modern technologies, we can now visit the world-best museums and art galleries without leaving our house. For example, the British Museum in London (https://britishmuseum.withgoogle.com/) offers an impressive visualisation of exhibits with images, descriptions, and detailed audio guides for each item.
• Move and relax. Physical stamina is as important as a mental one. Cosmic Kids Yoga channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga) has an impressive library of fun and engaging yoga videos combined with storytelling for kids aged 3+ and up.

We hope this post can be of some use to you as a parent, in your home-schooling journey during this time of global health pandemic.

As things change, make sure to check this post for updates. In the meantime, you’re doing an amazing job.

Stay safe and take care of yourselves.