Eassa@Nature

Salam friends, I know that you are probably as busy as I am trying to figure out what to do for the online learning – as Eassa is enrolled part time at our local school. So many emails and notices to go through, platforms, passwords, submission dates, and meetings! And with three kids schooling, I am seriously thinking of hiring a full time schooling manager.
As you can see though, my Eassa isn’t stressed. He is busy learning about counting vegetable plants in the garden; creating a bar graph using his ruler to mark the number of items (making a straight line is so exciting when you are 5); drawing the plants, noting that some vegetables are roots, others are stems or leaves; learning the names in both Arabic and English and writing the names on the bar-graph; comparing numbers, adding and subtracting … We did all this over several days with an hour or so on each day. But we did talk about all the learning almost the whole day. We didn’t use worksheets. We created our own record table and made a sketch/map of the vegetable beds (Eassa is heavily into maps). We worked whenever we were ready for it. We didn’t do a lot of other things we could do because we both thought what we did was enough. We hung the map, tables and bar-graphs on the wall in the living room and showed them to each sibling and to dad, with full explanation, repeated several times.
One thing to remember with lower primary aged children, is that they still learn best through play, being in touch with nature, and by arousing their curiousity. It’s about enjoying the process (both you and the child). Some schools are either requiring the child to be online from 9AM to 3.30PM, or at least for a number of hours logged online or doing specified hours of learning with parent. It doesn’t work like this for schooling at home. It’s a completely different learning environment that shouldn’t aim to replicate school. So you are entitled to feel that the timetable offered by your school is overwhelming if it requires hours of daily learning. speak to the school about it. Voice out your concerns. Minimise the stress. Enjoy this rare opportunity to learn with your child.