by Jackie Nunnery
With schools closed, much of the talk has centered around schooling at home with parents trying to re-create a classroom environment.
“They’re only setting themselves up for failure,” said Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers president Lisa Jones, who has been homeschooling her children for the past eight years. Instead of layering more stress on an already stressful situation, in the short-term Jones suggests incorporating learning into daily activities. “Learning happens a lot of times when education has nothing to do with it. When you’re teaching your kid how to make cookies, you’re learning math, you’re learning chemistry.”
Jones also suggested board games and simple addition or subtraction practice with a deck of cards or dice to keep kids interested.
And in the current situation with high uncertainty and the lack of a familiar structure and routine, it may also be unrealistic to expect children to pick up where they left off. “Kids are anxious too, and anxious kids are hardest to teach,” Jones said. Instead Jones suggests…
