Your child is sick, has had an accident or is refusing to go into school. Perhaps you are starting to consider home educating, or withdrawing your child from school. Whatever the reason, your child is at home and needing to learn – and we are here to help.

For All Ages

1. Have shorter days: your children’s typical school day might be six or more hours long, plus homework, but one-to-one homeschooling is much more intensive than studying in a classroom.
2. Structure the day: even adults have difficulty with working from home without appropriate structure, and it’s harder for kids. Have strict start, finish, break and lunchtimes if you can. If your day is more flexible as your child struggles with strucutre, consider having a space where you child goes when it is time to work.
3. Be flexible: this might seem contradictory, but some flexibility is important too. A good teacher will call a halt to an activity that isn’t working; you should be prepared to do the same.

For Primary School Children

1. Keep activities short: your child might have an hour of English or Mathematics in their school timetable, but that doesn’t mean an hour on a single activity. A six-year-old might have a 15-minute attention span while a ten-year-old can manage up to half an hour. Switch activities when their attention runs out.
2. Accept any kind of learning: many home educators do not stick closely to the curriculum. If your child is planting seeds, knitting, baking a cake, reading a book or even doing household chores, they’re learning something, and that’s great. 
3. Encourage siblings to teach one another: teaching is one of the most effective ways to learn, so why not have an older child teach a younger one? Both will benefit – and you’ll get time off.

For Secondary School Children

1. Encourage them not to worry: children who have been under pressure about upcoming exams might now be anxious about what happens next. Reassure them that you are going to be supporting them with their next steps
2. Create fun tasks: liven up academic subjects by letting your child be sillier than usual. Instead of the same old boring essay titles, you could get your child to consider which character in Hamlet would cope best if their phone was taken away!
3. Involve them in your own work: do you have tasks you could delegate to a brand-new intern? Your child could learn a great deal from managing your inbox or proofreading for you, and it’ll save you time as well.