How to keep children busy (learning ) during Quarantine? Here is the way

All schools close, parents are suddenly faced with the challenge of keeping their children occupied at home.
Most of the children are either busy with mobiles, TV, Fighting, video games(all unwanted Activities)

In the evening, the lockdown was announced, due to concerns about the spread of the novel coronavirus,  schools, offices, factories, etc would be closed for 21 days starting from midnight of….  students are now on a surprise -long break, and they’ll be spending every day of it cooped up at home with their parents.

Moms, dads, and kids all over the country have suddenly found themselves in a cozy and chaotic new situation. As me and my close friend (educationist) were on discussion last week that, it takes only a matter of weeks away from school for students to fall disastrously behind schedule on their learning. And realistically, it takes probably only a matter of hours away from school for them to affect their parents’ productivity. So in places all over the world where remote learning will be difficult, impossible, or delayed, parents are facing a formidable challenge:- how to keep their kids from bouncing off the walls or glowing screens, while also avoiding backslide and learning loss.

Here I come up with ample no of Activities ideas for our children. Parents have a vital role to play in this to  facilitate active, engaged learning.

✓Say For preschool-age kids and younger children, it is advised to parents to find time throughout the day to read books with their kids. “Reading interactively with (not just at) children is very beneficial for language and literacy instruction,” but  “Parents should encourage their children to talk about pictures, predict what will happen next in a story, and what characters feel.”
✓ I also recommends taking walks outside (to whatever extent possible,can be just your courtyard) and talking about whatever catches children’s attention, as an exercise in language skills. “Name the object and repeat this several times. Describe the object. Ask the child what [he or she] thinks about the object, for Example You are looking at a ! You can start the conversation with, That is a beautiful , isn’t it? Do you like the ? That  is black. And look, over there, there’s another one—do you know what to call it?”

✓Parents can also use their newly plentiful time with littler kids to talk about past experiences, perhaps using photos as a visual aid. “Ask, ‘See, here’s a picture of—your Nana. Do you remember what we did last time we visited to Nana’s house?

Parents should take a while and stay on a topic … getting their child to elaborate on who, what, when, where, how, and why something happened, and how the child felt about it.” The repeated act of “elaborative reminiscing,” will benefit autobiographical memory and narrative ability.

✓For older (and responsible) kids, certain kinds of independent play can substitute for structured school learning. Send your kid who is learning math basics on a mission around the house or the building to count all the windows, doors or tiles for example—and then asking them the average number of the things they counted in each room or apartment.

✓You can even challenge children to pitch a tent—or, in the absence of a tent, create a play fort—out in the yard or at the parking can teach kids innovation and resourcefulness.

✓You know what , it’s always fun for kids to write spelling words or do math problems on the windows using dry-erase markers. (“It’s almost like writing on a wall, but you’re allowed to do it.”)

Of course, the cancellation of school, and the loss of the 6 hours of child care which used to be just on  weekday, makes parenting an all-day, every-day job, on top of a parent’s daily routine of cleaning , washing etc without house help. And it becomes more challenging for those parents working from home also have the challenge of keeping their kids independently occupied so that they themselves can work.

✓For slightly older kids I recommend enlisting kids’ help in Cooking, it can be a science lesson (let’s talk about how yeast works), a math lesson (what’s a half cup plus a quarter cup?), or a reading lesson (does this label say “baking soda” or “baking powder”? Or what is the manufacturing date ,price or ingredients used to make that particular product and it provides opportunities for kids to learn about nutrition as well as foods and flavors from around the world.
Ohh! I recall when my daughter was small we used to make letters out of chocolate and then words out of the one with the wrong answer got a chance to eat another ones chocolate , ohh it was so fun…and I use to always encourage her over my mistakes.

✓Keeping kids busy during the workday in ways that won’t require supervision is easier the older they are. But “For young children”—those younger than 3 years old,“independent play is tough. They really need social interaction,” and Parents will be tempted to hand over an Phone or iPad or the like. This is understandable, but parents should also know that the younger the child, the worse this is for their language and cognitive development.” As alternatives I suggest setting kids up with Play-Doh, it can be wheat doh also, art supplies, audiobooks, or even homemade recordings of parents reading their favorite books.

Every child can become a lover of books if given habit at right time.

But for school-age kids, there is another way to encourage critical thinking is, like sitting beside to your kid and saying ‘Okay, we’re going to watch this movie, but we’re going to watch it on Thursday. Between now and then, I want you to read the book,’”. That way, “you can do a comparative analysis between the book and the movie: ‘What changes? Which one do you think is better? What things did they have to leave out because otherwise this movie would have been four hours long?’”

Just try to keep as much of that normalcy for kids as you can. Because if we encourage each other to share resources, a lot of times you’ll find richness in that, community-building. It helps the kids feel like the world isn’t falling apart right now,” Remember“It’s really easy for kids to feel depressed about how bad things are: I’m never going to go back to school. I’m never going to see my friends again. So I think we need to be cognizant of how much of that they’re absorbing—and try to replace that with some things that are positive.”

STAY HOME ! STAY SAFE!!!