What to do When Schools are Closed?

With many schools across the world closing, kids are home during the school year. Some districts were awesome and have great e-learning options for students, but even these are limited and due not occupy an entire school day. So what are parents supposed to do with their kids?

My plan is to keep my kids learning to the best of my ability. We will incorporate their usual subjects into their day through a variety of different activities. I’ll probably decide to start the day a little later than normal. Thus, we can all sleep in and have a no rush breakfast as their are no buses to catch.

Check out our quick and easy to view schedule with times.

English Instruction

Math

Then, we will spend 1 hour working on math. For math, my kids have access to Khan Academy. Just make a FREE account and pick your child’s grade level to get them started. Most children would cover just 1 topic a day, so trying to do 1-2 topics on Khan Academy a day would be wonderful. They have videos to watch, problems to try, samples to see, and even quizzes and unit tests.

We also love mathplayground. This is a free website with great math games to enhance your child’s math skills. We also use xtramath.org to work on our math facts for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Just a few minutes a day to strengthen the basic math facts necessary for all future math work.

No Screen Math

In addition to computer based programs, there are so many simple math games that you can play with some dice or a deck of cards. You children can work on adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions, decimals, and percents by rolling dice or using the cards 1 – 10 to make numbers. Try war, but use two cards and find the sum or difference. You can play slap jack but slap sums of 10. Race to 100 (for adding) or to 0 (for subtracting), by rolling dice or flipping 2 cards and adding or subtracting that number to the ones before.

For more advanced children, use 5 – 10 cards and try to make a key number (24, 50, 17, etc) using any operations or even exponents. Or even just make problems with the cards for your children to solve.

Reading

After math, we will spend 30 minutes reading. The kids can read books we have at home or if you are lucky and your library is still open, grab some books quick. If you are limited on books at home, Scholastic has put out some FREE learn at home lessons for pre-K to 6+ grade. These have a variety of different materials for your child to read plus some activities and even virtual tours for you child to check out.

Most local libraries offer some free online books or subscriptions as well, such as ebooks, audible books, Encyclopedia Britannica, Explora Primary School, PowerKnowledge (for science), ScholasticGo, BookFlix, and Tumblebooks. We are lucky to have a few district provided resources to use as well: RAZ Kids and Epic Books.

For reading, we will do more of a reader’s workshop type of learning. My kids can read any book they like for 20-25 minutes. Then they can write about their book in a journal, ask questions, give a summary, anything to let me know what they read. Later, I can respond to their writing and ask questions or push for more details to expand on their reading.

Looking for help to support your child in reading, check out our Learn to Read Series.

Movement

Next, we will take about 40 minutes to play outside or do some physical break from learning. We are lucky to have a local park with both tennis courts and basketball courts. What a great way to let them play while working on their physical fitness too! If the weather is poor, I will use GoNoodle, which has many different kids of activities for kids. Many are dancing to popular music, but there are also mindfulness activities and even yoga. Plus it is FREE!

Language Arts

Afterwards, we will come in and have a snack. Then the kids can spend about 20 minutes on language arts type of learning. For this, use the free scholastic at home lessons (see above). You can also access ABCYa, select your child’s grade and learning games for some fun educational games. Our school district also provides us with Lexia, which is a great resource and our textbook company (Pearson) has online digital resources as well.

Writing

For the next 30 minutes, we will follow this up working on writing as well. My kids can write stories, articles, and even opinion pieces. Stories are easy because they usually have so many different things to write about, but if this is a struggle, try the grab bag story. With your child, brainstorm 6 characters, 6 settings, 6 problems. Write each on an index card. Then have your child pick 1 of each and create their own story.

Articles are fun because they can write about anything that interests them and may even need to do some research. This pairs nicely with the free at home lessons from scholastic. Or use the different free databases from your local library. And opinion pieces can be anything your child have a strong opinion about. Maybe they can write about if they should ever go back to learn in the classroom, if they should have longer recess, or even if their parents should go back to work.

If you are looking for some easy to use templates, be sure to check out our store. See how to use them in Easy Writing Templates.

Lunch

Now that the kids have been in school about half the day, it’s time for lunch! Of course, lunch can be anything you usually serve. We have stocked up on tortillas, pizza sauce and cheese to make mini pizzas as well as pasta, rice, and frozen veggies to make quick and easy lunches. I will pair lunch with letting them watch 30 minutes of TV in Spanish. My kids are fortunate enough to attend a dual language program, so they will need to keep up with their Spanish as well. Listening to music and watching TV are great options, especially if you do not speak much Spanish.

Spanish Instruction

Reading

Following lunch, we will spend about an hour working on our Spanish language. My kids will read in Spanish. RAZ Kids is great for this and so is Epic Books. Duolingo is a free resource to practice their Spanish language. We can practice our Spanish vocabulary, Drops is a great app for this, and even listen to Spanish music. This we will pair with keeping a Spanish journal where they can write stories, journal about their day, or even create articles.

Special Classes

For the next half an hour, we will incorporate some kid of “special” activity. This might be art where they can draw, create out of paper, paint, make out of clay, or even use technology to create art. Or we may work on music by singing songs, using GoNoodle, playing some of the music instruments we just happen to have at home, or even making some music instruments out of common household materials. Another alternative, we can work on some coding with our Bee Bots, Coding Mouse, and even our Lego Boost. Yet another, even practice coding online at code.org. Such a great website with games for all ages.

Science and Social Studies

We will end our day with science and social studies instruction. My current plan here is to look up my child’s curriculum map on the district website to see what they would be learning in the 3rd/4th quarter of the school year. Then I will utilize the free at home lessons from scholastic, PowerKnowledge or ScholasticGo (from the library), and BrainPop which is FREE for 30 days when you sign up. Another great resource is StudiesWeekly, which is offering all their resources for FREE due to the school closings. They have both science and social studies up to grade 5.

Kids Guide their Own Learning

My plan for science and social studies is to look at what my kids should be learning. Then let them write down questions that interest them on the subject. From those questions, we will turn to library resources of the above websites to research their questions and find answers. This will hopefully lead to more questions and more investigations! And we will try to make these as hands on as possible using items around the house.

Then they can show their learning is so many different ways: make a poster, design a slideshow, direct a movie, create a book, etc. As a bonus, we will incorporate some MakerStation ideas into our explorations too! These are great STEM activities, where you child uses items found in the home to create something (a car, boat, tower, bridge, board game, catapult, rocket, maze, etc). Let your child’s imagination be their guide.

Final Thoughts

This is a full day of learning for my kids, approximately 5 – 5.5 hours. Of course we will take breaks as needed, shorten things when necessary, extend things if interest is peaked, play board games, and maybe watch a movie too! As we move through this week and any additional weeks of at home learning, I will update our progress and reflect on how things are going. This is just my beginning plan. Of course, the plan will change as my children require and everything is flexible.

Would love to hear about your strategies for tackling kids being home while doing school. Drop us a comment below and let us know.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.