Taking a step further towards our mission of helping you – our dear parents – during this lockdown, PlayShifu sought out a few experts’ help, to seamlessly continue your child’s learning.

Read on to understand what these home-schoolers had to say:

Rebecca, mom of a 7-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, @thehomeschoolofwonder

1. How much time do you spend with the child, and preparing yourself for the sessions?

At this point, I don’t spend a lot of time planning since I have bought curriculums that help me out. As I figure out their needs and learning styles, there might be more planning involved.

• 3-hour school day + 3 to 4 hours of activities
• 3-hour split into language arts (grammar, and spelling)
  20 minutes of reading
  15 minutes of handwriting
  30 minutes of Math
  1 – 1.5 hours’ rotation between science and history every day. When one child works on their own stuff and does their independent activity, I focus on the other child.

• After the session, I give them the independence to choose an activity of their choice. My daughter likes arts, and my son loves to build robots and play with legos.

2. Which tools/apps/books/toys do you use?

I use Google Search to identify the different styles of homeschooling. There are various methods to homeschool – curriculum-based homeschools, online-based homeschools, and sometimes it is decided on the day itself as to what they want to do.

I purchased a curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful, which covers language arts, Math, and Science. My daughter does Math from Teaching Textbooks, another paid curriculum. We just started a Science curriculum with Apologia.

There’s an app called Teachers Pay Teachers wherein there is a lot of free material. I also go to museums and zoo websites for content that they can use. Adding on to it are the various YouTube channels and Netflix documentaries that I watch.

Lisa, mom of a 7-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, @everyonestoyclub

1. How much time do you spend with the child, and preparing yourself for the sessions, every week?

Teagen is in 4th grade now and spends about 2 to 3 hours every day, whereas Zane spends about 1.5 hours and prefers outdoor activities.

2. Which tools/apps/books/toys do you use?

Some paid curriculums we use:

• Real Science Odyssey (Panida Press)
•  Moving Beyond the Page

3. Chrissy, Twin boys aged 10, @granola_n_grace

How much time do you spend typically weekly (with the child, and preparing yourself for the sessions with the child)?

We are involved in a homeschool co-op and the teacher comes up with the curriculum herself. I just have to make sure that they complete their homework.

• For Math, we are doing an online curriculum which is graded online so I don’t have to do much there as well.
• For writing and grammar is where I have to prepare since I have to read the lesson beforehand or watch videos. This takes me an hour to do a week. So I usually just end up preparing for two hours a week.
• For science, they have to read their chapter and then questions to follow up + worksheets. For Math, they do Teaching Textbooks – daily chapters + answering questions. It takes 30 minutes to an hour.
• For literature, they read through a book. They have a book a month and they read chapters from that. They also have to do keyword outlines which they have to do with text (3 to 5 paragraph papers). For history, they memorise facts. They also have to memorise vocabulary with flashcards and grammar charts. For example, what a noun is, all forms of a noun, a verb etc
• They also learn a foreign language like Spanish occasionally. I personally also teach the Bible – we have a chapter by chapter book which we go through every day. 

Which tools/apps/books/toys do you use?

• Teaching Textbooks for Math
• Shifu Orboot for history and Geography (one of the few toys we use)

• Model of the human body for Anatomy 
• Flashcards and Math games online (Number Knockout)
• We would love to have an app/ game where they have to do different formulas to knock out the numbers on a board – from 1 to 36
  

If you’re a home-schooler and think that you can contribute to this small effort, leave an excellent comment, and help the other parents!

Remember to stay safe and stay at home.

HomeSchooling resources to use during school shutdown. We’ve compiled a list of learning resources just for you guys in this PDF!