{"id":4171,"date":"2020-04-05T21:35:42","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T01:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.psychedconsult.com\/?p=4171"},"modified":"2020-04-05T21:35:42","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T01:35:42","slug":"keepin-our-kids-busy-during-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.psychedconsult.com\/keepin-our-kids-busy-during-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"Keepin\u2019 Our Kids Busy during COVID"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><span style=\"display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff; color: #336081; font-family: 'Lato',serif; font-size: 28px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 36px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;\">Written by Michelle Molle-Krowiak<\/span><\/h4>\n<p>As of now, we have been homeschooling our children for a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks longer than we had anticipated. Homeschooling is overwhelming for many parents, like myself. As a mom of 4, with two younger children who need a good amount of support to complete their daily assignments, and as a working mom, this is beyond tough and anxiety-provoking.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re like me, I had grand visions and plans for distance learning. I envisioned myself planning ahead and knowing exactly how to instruct on the different subjects. I&#8217;m not sure why I thought this as I don&#8217;t have training in education!\u00a0 What I am finding is that I am in an endless battle with hours of daily screen time, while I try to work and instruct at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>I have found a few great games and activities for you to engage in with your children from\u00a0@BigLifeJournal (www.biglifejournal.com). I&#8217;ve broken down the suggestions into toddlers, early elementary and late elementary-aged children.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the day, please try to set your guilt aside as we are not trained to teach our children, and we certainly can&#8217;t expect to multi-task two very big demands. Be forgiving of yourself, try to avoid holding the expectation that you will be able to give your child the same number of hours of instruction as to when they were physically attending school. Your time is better invested in creating a schedule that builds in time for your child to engage in some screen time activities, downtime and non-screen\/electronic activities, games, and crafts.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Toddlers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><u>Animal Hide &amp; Seek<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Either print pictures of animals and have your child color them, or take stuffed animals or figures of animals and hide them in the house.<\/li>\n<li>Give your child clues as to where they could be and go seek them out!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><u>I Spy Clean Up Game<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tell your child that you \u2018spy with your little eye\u2019 different categories of toys that may be lying on the floor in your playroom, family room, kitchen, bedrooms, or wherever and ask him to find those items and place in a labeled bucket so that finding that toy and putting it away is easy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Early Elementary <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><u>The Floor is Lava<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Declare that the floor is \u2018lava\u2019 and designate a few safe spots.<\/li>\n<li>Start the count down and once you hit 1, everyone\u2019s feet must be off of the floor and on something else.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n<p><u>Balloon Toss<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Blow up a balloon and have your child or children try to keep the balloon in the air.<\/li>\n<li>If it touches the ground, the game is over.<\/li>\n<li>Count the number of times the balloon was hit before touching the ground<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Late Elementary<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><u>Make a Fort<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Gather up pillows from your bed or the couch, or both, sheets, chairs and build a fort<\/li>\n<li>Watch a movie together while in the fort<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><u>Create an All About Me Board<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Give your child headings such as:\n<ul>\n<li>My Favorite Food<\/li>\n<li>My Favorite Movie<\/li>\n<li>My Favorite Vacation<\/li>\n<li>My Favorite Book<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Let your child create a board theme of their choice<\/li>\n<li>This project may take a few hours or complete a little bit each day<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Michelle Molle-Krowiak As of now, we have been homeschooling our children for a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks longer than we had anticipated. Homeschooling is overwhelming for many parents, like myself. As a mom of 4, with two younger children who need a good amount of support to complete their daily [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Keepin\u2019 Our Kids Busy during COVID - Psychological and Educational Consulting<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.psychedconsult.com\/keepin-our-kids-busy-during-covid\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Keepin\u2019 Our Kids Busy during COVID - Psychological and Educational Consulting\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Written by Michelle Molle-Krowiak As of now, we have been homeschooling our children for a couple of weeks. 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