How to plan your day around online schooling –
Life under lockdown! The big unknown! A totally unprecedented scenario!
It affects everyone, from parents to teenagers, from little ones to grandparents.
Structuring your own and your family’s day, especially around online schooling, leads to more productivity and less stress.
- Start the day calm, cool and relaxed
Ease your way into the day. Help the people in your home to do the same. Living under lockdown has enough stress factors – it makes it easier for everyone if they have a slow and relaxed start to the day. If it’s a bit later than normal that is also okay.
- Everyone makes their own bed!
A famous book about the science of habit formation states that making your bed every morning leads to better productivity and a greater sense of well-being, amongst other things.
Making your own bed establishes a routine (also see point 3). It ensures that your day kickstarts in the right way yet it does not take a lot of time and it’s easily doable.
- Create a daily and weekly schedule
A schedule gives structure to the day and it provides a sense of reassurance at the same time (also see point 4).
Bear in mind that is okay if everyone’s schedule is different. Ensure that most mealtimes are shared though.
Include set times for online classes, independent learning, reading, household chores, some kind of activity and free time.
Allocating a set period of time to a task and sticking to a plan are valuable life skills to have. These will stand everyone in good stead after they have already forgotten that there was something like a lockdown.
- Weekends are … weekends!
A fun fact is that the concept of weekends has only been around for about 100 years or so.
Nearly everyone is used to either no school for two whole days or two days off from work.
There is no need why this should not happen during lockdown too.
Of course this does not mean that no homework (or DIY) should be done but a weekend should also offer fun or relaxing possibilities. This will allow for some time for yourself as a parent and for children to switch off in order to recharge their batteries for the coming week
- Breathe deeply, it’s okay to be a different kind of parent during the pandemic
The pandemic is outside of your control. You can control how you handle it though.
It’s an uncertain time for everyone. There is no template to tell us how to handle everything that is going on around us and everything we hear about the outside world.
Stick to your basic routine but allow yourself to be flexible. Also allow yourself to change the rules as you go along and as things change, sometimes day by day. Be honest but reassuring when you explain why something that applied yesterday, does not apply any longer or why the rules have been changed for a day or two.
And, remember: this too shall pass.
