No need to panic: let’s get interactive

So many people on social media appear to be using this time of social isolation to catch up on Netflix series, bake banana bread, drink wine during the day and complete home improvement projects. I take off my hat to these people!

I’m not sure where my days are going, but I certainly don’t feel like there are enough hours in the day between work, laundry and child-rearing. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

Since my husband and I are still working full-time hours (more than that if you count the hours at the farm), my senior infants daughter is not getting the best home education at the moment.

School days

Thank goodness for the RTÉ school hours and other virtual learning supports out there right now. This is how our “school days” are going at the moment:

1 Maeve plays, draws or watches TV from 9-11am while my husband milks the cows and I start my work day.

2 At 11am, we put her in the office with the home laptop set to RTÉ 2 and she takes at least an hour of lessons.

3 She moves from the office to the kitchen table, where she works out of her school books for 45 minutes.

4 We have lunch and go for a walk, or practise soccer in the backyard. Sometimes we do some gardening.

5 I give her some instruction on the piano and she practises for 15-20 minutes.

6 She goes upstairs to play with her toys.

7 I give her TV time or she goes outside to ride her bike.

Some days, we include kitchen time for filming our Kids in the Kitchen series. We are also taking part in Agri Aware’s Incredible Edibles Family Challenge.

As I write this all down, it looks like we’re doing a lot and I’m not, in fact, failing at home schooling. But what’s listed is the ideal. The reality is that not every task takes as long as I would like and she spends a lot more time in front of screens (where she would LOVE to be all day) than I would like. Why do YouTube toy shows exist?

Interactive learning

Luckily, Irish Country Living has learned about some unique, interactive learning opportunities from Google. These activities are fun for the whole family, meaning you can sit down and enjoy the learning process along with your child.

If your kids love story time, start with Google Earth’s Fairy Tales from Various Lands, where you click on map pins to hear folklore from different countries. The stories are accompanied by supporting media which provides an explanation of the location and the story.

If your smallies enjoy watching Masha and the Bear on TV, you can find the Baba Yaga story (as featured in Masha’s Spooky Stories) by clicking on the pin in Siberia!

To learn about population and geography, show your kids Google’s Earth at Night map, which shows how populations cluster into cities.

One Google feature I will definitely be using with my daughter is Be Internet Awesome – an interactive guide to becoming a responsible internet user. She is at an age where she knows how to use the remote control and YouTube on my phone, so it’s the right time to start learning how to use a computer, with supervision.

If you're tearing your hair out because your child just wants to watch YouTube all day, introduce Learn@Home - Youtube's educational channel which provides virtual lessons for all age groups and areas of interest.

Happy homeschooling!