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Afterschooling – supporting your child’s teachers at home

As a teacher, I mainly taught high school students and for the last 5 years of my teaching experience, I taught them Computer Science. I saw my role in the first 3 years of the high school to teach the children the skills that they needed to be able to use the equipment proficiently in whichever subject and stage of education they were in, giving them skills for life and then to teach them to pass the examinations in the last 4 years. I tried to fit in all the skills that I knew they would need but basics like how to type I was never able to fit in – when parents asked me how they could support their child’s learning in computer science best especially on weeks where there was no homework due to being in the middle of a project on the computers then my reply was always “get them on a typing course” it’s a skill that they will never forget and that will help them in the future more than anything else that I could give as fill in homework.

After schooling - supporting your child and their teacher at home, some suggestions of where you can find ideas and resources for helping them learn with you outside of the classroom
Mom helping daughter with homework. Parenting, cooperation, common fun via shutterstock

Now I just taught 1 subject, but even there, I needed parents to support their child at home through activities that would supplement because of the way that schools and education systems work we as parents need to help our kids through hands-on activities for our youngest ones in school and through setting aside time to support and help them as they grow old – taking them on a trip to support what they are doing in a certain subject or if they start talking about something that interested them in geography sit and research it with them discovering it together.

Since my kids started school I have found that schools because of the way the curriculum has changed don’t have time to focus on perfecting handwriting, following a child’s interest through as they ask questions and asking them to discover their own answers with throwing even more, questions in the mix. It’s not that their teachers are bad it’s just that with 30 children in a class and a set curriculum to follow there isn’t enough time for everything. That is why afterschooling – doing hands-on fun activities with a learning purpose helps the kids and the teachers out.

Twinkl is a fantastic resource for parents, if you are in the UK you may have seen your kids come home with a printable from Twinkl or the school may have provided you with some of the resources there. There is so much more than that – we’re using sound mats to help with spelling on homework like this phase 3 sound mat which has some of the phonemes and some of the blends on them.phpThumb_generated_thumbnailjpg

Combined with Twinkl resources, and my own creativity I also use Pinterest a lot – there I have set up some boards for specific ages like my Preschool board, Early Elementary – covering key stage 1 and into year 3 and 4 of Key Stage 2, as well as specific subjects like Science and Nature, Maths and Literacy/English.

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After schooling - supporting your child and their teacher at home, some suggestions of where you can find ideas and resources for helping them learn with you outside of the classroom

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After schooling - supporting your child and their teacher at home, some suggestions of where you can find ideas and resources for helping them learn with you outside of the classroom
Little girl work with mom. Parenting, cooperation, common fun. Top view via Shutterstock
Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

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