While it’s always important to track screen time, the reality of the ongoing pandemic has necessitated a bit of a shift in priorities. With parents working from home while also balancing homeschool activities, there are points in the day where you simply need your child to sit still and remain quiet so you can get some work done.
Rather
than sitting them in front of the television or letting them fire up a
mindlessly addicting app on your smartphone, here are seven different online
educational activities to help those long remote-learning-work-from-home days
stay happy and productive.
1. Have Them Compose an Email
One
of the best social-distance-appropriate activities that your child can do is
write a letter to a friend or family member. While this can be a physical
letter, it can also be an email.
Having your kids compose electronic letters to their loved ones is an excellent way to combat boredom while also encouraging them to refine their composition and typing skills.
A similar task can be accomplished with short essays. But in this case, your child would need an essay writing guide, which they can find on the do my essays service website.
2. Look Up an Educational Playlist
There
are countless educational playlists that can provide a screen-free opportunity
for some musical fun.
Head
onto Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, or your own musical app of choice and do a
search for an educational playlist that your kids would enjoy. This can be both
generally school-focused or more specific, such as a list of math-related songs on YouTube.
3. Set Up an Online Interview
If
you’re looking for a more sociable interaction, you can use the internet to set
up an online interview for your child. They can ask a family member questions
about their past or they can talk to a coworker about their job.
This option can also work well as a plain, old-fashioned telephone interview. If you feel like your child has already soaked up too much time in front of a screen — the average Genertion Z-er gets over 6.5 hours of screen time per day — switch to a phone call format. Don’t forget to have your child record the answers and then practice their typing by turning them into a transcript.
4. Show Your Kids How to Code
It’s
never too early to expose your kids to the wonders of coding. You can do this in an engaging way by connecting coding to their everyday life, showing
them detailed examples of how coding works, and even introduce them to the
actual code itself.
Your
child’s downtime is the perfect opportunity to start their coding journey in a
fun and interesting manner.
5. Identify the Best Online Educational Websites
If you pick one website for your child to frequent, they’re going to quickly become bored. However, if you can identify a plethora of trustable online establishments, you can create a carousel of options that are always offering new educational content for your child.
6. Get Apps Geared Toward Younger Kids
Much like websites, it’s also a good idea to invest in a good tech stack of apps for your younger kids. By creating a treasure trove of options, like National Geographic Kids, Khan Academy, and Reading Eggs, you can keep your younger children happy and learning while you get your work done.
7. Find Apps That Develop Older Kids’ Skills, Too
Just
because your kids are older doesn’t mean you should leave them texting friends,
posting on social media, or playing video games all day long. If you have high
schoolers, you can still encourage them to spend their time in more educational
pursuits.
These
should still be focused around educational gamification, such as Airport Tycoon or 3rd World Farmer. Games like
these provide a great way to make the learning fun while keeping it educationally focused.
Keep Learning Going Around the Clock
With
so much remote activity going on, it’s tempting to let your kids veg out in
front of the television after remote school as you attempt to work from home.
However, looking for constructive, educational activities like writing an email, conducting an online interview, or playing an educational game can help to keep all of your child’s activities educationally focused — while simultaneously freeing you up to get your work done, as well.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jori Hamilton is an experienced writer residing in the Northwestern U.S. She covers a wide range of topics but takes a particular interest in covering topics related to child learning, the importance of STEM education, and technology. To learn more about Jori, you can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
