Weekly learn at home blog

Week 1: Introducing your weekly learning blog

This article has been written by parent blogger Emma Bradley.

Welcome to the first post in a weekly series to help you at home while schools are closed. Parent blogger Emma Bradley is keeping a diary of the teaching and supporting she is doing with her daughter Erin to provide you with ideas to keep your children occupied.

I know many parents are concerned but I have been impressed with how many resources are already available and I am sure there will be more to follow. Learning takes place in many ways and it doesn’t need to be worksheet overload. We can be creative and we can use our own strengths. Don’t worry that you don’t understand the curriculum or that you are not great at Maths yourself – no-one is expecting you to replace the qualified teachers who have been trained in teaching and have years of experience. Just do what you can and what you enjoy.

This week I don’t have a full week to share as we are only on day three of working from home but we made a good start.

Day 1

Today was mainly about setting expectations as I explained to Erin that we won’t be following the school day exactly. We are tailoring our own day as I need to do my work too! We spent the day getting organised, found notepads, got a box to keep things in. We ordered some crafting supplies and Erin created a list of things that she wants to learn. She loves WW2 and I am thinking about what we can do around the subjects that interest her. Erin is also preparing from Grammar School Entrance exams so we are using the resources I have already bought for that. We also covered some life skills and Erin learnt how to make me a cracking cup of coffee!

Day 2

We were more prepared today and spent some time drawing animals. I found a drawing tutorial and we both had a go at drawing birds, chicks and elephants. We are planning to make little cards that we can drop to neighbours and also send to older relatives we have who are mostly isolating.

We also completed a few pages of English comprehension using some workbooks, Collins have a great range including Treasure House which are aimed at primary age students.

Erin has recently read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and I set her the task of writing a book review, we used an online template for structure and she got on with it. Erin also wrote a diary entry from the character Shmaul after he met Bruno.

Day 3

Erin was keen to get going this morning and I think I need to slow her down a little. She thinks that she needs to be working academically the whole time whereas we need to go at a slower pace otherwise the novelty will quickly wear off. The school day might be 6 hours or so, but they probably only spend about 20 mins an hour working – much time is taken on moving around the classroom, assemblies, listening instructions, break times and more.

She started off with a 10-minute Maths practice book. Then she spent an hour on the laptop doing Scratch which is a programming code game. Many will be familiar with this from school and it is a free app. This was followed by Times Tables practise before doing circuits in the living room.

Do come back next week for more ideas and our weekly diary post and in the meantime keep smiling and remember this too will pass.

Read more tips from Emma in 'Week 2 -The New Normal' here.

Written by Emma Bradley

About Emma

Emma Bradley, a qualified secondary teacher and current primary school governor with many years experience of working in different childcare and education settings. She has three children, the eldest is Chloe a second year university student, a son Dylan who is 16 and just found out his GCSEs are not going ahead and Erin who is 10 and still at primary school.