So the COVID-19 has forced you to homeschool…

As I write, the coronavirus has caused school shutdowns for weeks (months in some countries.) I can’t imagine the impact this is having on families in which all the caretakers work outside the home. Even if you were already a stay-at-home parent, this turn of events might feel completely overwhelming or you might be worried your kids will get behind.

I hope that the families in your life who have already been doing the educate-at-home thing are offering their support to you right now as you’re thrust into educating and caring for your child with only a weekend’s notice. If not, here’s a little crash course of encouragement and practical recommendations. Most of this will apply to all ages, abilities, and personality types (for both you and your child.)

That said, may these next couple weeks feel like an invitation to enjoy your kids, know them better, and try something new! This post is lengthy and organized by subheadings Things to Remember, Try a Unit Study, Recommended Screen Time, and Recommended Resources that I personally vouch for because I brought every single one of them with us in our 386-sq ft home :)

Things to Remember

1.) Remember this word: “with.” Allow yourself to really believe that your presence is a gift to your kids, and that merely by your “with-ness” these next few weeks, they will develop into more secure, confident, and mature young people. You’re qualified to teach your kids because you know and love them probably more than any other adult in the world does. (And if that’s not the case, now’s your chance to deepen your relationship.)
I’m not very good at painting, for example, but look at these paintings my son and I made side-by-side, together. You just can’t quantify the value of “with”-ness, you know?

2.) Even as an authority and instructor, view yourself as a co-learner. Even if their academic studies are way above (or way below) your comfort level, you are qualified to teach your children as long as you have the humility to learn along with them. They’re not going to remember most of the facts you might try to teach them, but you know what they will remember? They’ll remember that Dad was absolutely fascinated by insect camouflage, or that Mom was terrible at calculus but she sat there and tried really hard to figure it out.

3.) You need to be loving it, too. Here’s the problem with the Pinterest-mom crafts and activities: they are not usually very open-ended. After you make a paper-plate elephant or you do a complicated science experiment — which takes maybe 10 minutes with your kid, then 20 minutes for you to set it up and clean it! — then what? This is why I have a no-nursery-rhyme, no-Goodnight-Moon, no-intellectually-insulting-Nickelodeon-shows policy. All those things annoy me and create a distance between my kids and I. But if I introduce them to things that I love too — like Jon Foreman music and picture books with beautiful art and Pixar movies — then I don’t get burnt out by spending time with them. Plus, then they don’t run around talking like Minions or gabbing about petty Tiktok stars. ;)

4.) Ask yourself: What is the goal of education? Take some time to really think about it. How much do you remember from your schooling? What benefits did you gain from it? What approaches worked and didn’t work with your personality? School takes up the bulk of a kid’s time for 12+ years, much more if they go to college. The “why” and “so what” matters. Contemplating education and experimenting with different approaches for the next couple weeks could have a lifelong impact on your kid as you help them with their homework and spend summers together in the future.

Try a Unit Study

Two weeks is a great time to take a break from their normal studies, depending on what the teachers and schools expect and what curricula they provide. Either way, you’ll probably have a lot more time for twiddling your thumbs, especially if your spring break plans were canceled.

So I challenge you to simply ask your kids: “What do you want to learn about?” What’s something he or she is interested in that you can study more deeply? On what topics can you just spend some time lingering and wondering about?

Enjoy chasing rabbit trails, but just be careful when using the internet! (Needless to say, porn and frightening images are way too easy to find, and they abuse and create abusers.) The key to the internet is, again, the word with. We use Youtube and Google to learn and enjoy good art together.

If your child isn’t curious about anything, that’s a real red flag and shows how much he or she needs to have their curiosity stoked. And the same goes for you! Whether we are 7 or 70, we should never, ever outgrow wonder.

But here are some ideas to get you started:

-Pick a country or culture! Some easy ones to find recipes, activities, and lots of accessible things to learn about are Peru, Japan, Egypt, Sweden, Australia. This is a picture of some of the things we did to study Peru. (We watched The Emperor’s New Groove, of course!)

-Choose a time period and dive in. My son and I loved reading the graphic novel The Faithful Spy by John Hendrixtogether (I recommend age 8+) and through a colorful and compelling depiction of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life, we studied World War II in depth. And there are so many things you can do to immerse yourself in that awful time in history…in ways that are age-appropriate, of course.

-What’s an animal, plant, or ecosystem your child would like to know more about? Learn to draw (or even easier, trace) whatever pictures you can find of these things. Become well acquainted with the animal or plant’s biology and learn about how this creature is important to its environment and maybe even to us. (There are some great resources on bees!)

-Learn to cook together!
Home cooking is a lost art, and it’s amazing how fun it is to experiment with cooking no matter how old your kids are. My younger kids gather herbs, build pizzas, and cut vegetables, cheese, fruit, and even meat with plastic chef knives, and my older kids have a blast experimenting with seasonings and working on more complicated recipes!

The amazing thing about cooking is that the possibilities are nearly endless, and there isn’t really a ceiling of excellence, so whether your high schooler is a cereal-pouring level chef or Michelin rated, they can always be challenged to make yummier, healthier food. This is a skill that they will use multiple times each day for the rest of their lives. (I really, really could’ve benefited from learning how to cook in school.)

-Learn to bake bread together!
Baking your own bread is one of the most rewarding experiences, and it’s so much easier than you think. Check out Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day; this video summarizes the process and recipes are easy to find for free online. No kneading; only ingredients are flour, water, yeast, and salt. The premise is you make enough dough for four loaves and leave it all in your fridge until it’s ready to bake. Then you take off the portion you want, let it rest for 40 mins, bake at a high temp for 25 mins, then it’s done! It averages out to 5 minutes of work per loaf.

-Let your kid learn a new skill! My 7-year-old has been really into making balloon animals lately, and it’s been so good for him to study and practice until mastery. He wants to do it as a business eventually, but right now I just love watching him be a blessing to his siblings and friends by gifting them with dogs, showing them how to make swords, and even constructing a whole balloon-frame house to play in! And it just took a pump, balloons, and some Youtube videos!

-Learn to watercolor together! It’s washable, extremely simple to set up, it’s enjoyable for all ages (around 18 months and up), it’s soothing, and the end results are great to send in letters to grandmas and to pack with birthday cards.

If you hate watercolor as I used to, this is the ingredient you’re missing: quality materials. Crayola watercolors with those awful plastic paintbrushes on normal computer paper will not be an enjoyable experience. If you can put down $20, the paints will last you all year and you’ll be pleased even with what your 1-year-old can put on the paper.

Check out this 42-color paint set for $14 (which includes a waterbrush) and cut the large sheets from this $6 watercolor pad into many smaller pieces, and you’re all set for a very long time. Use tutorials from Dear Ann Art or buy her book.

Recommended Screen Time

But screen time is needed for such a time as this, right? Especially if you’re still trying to work? There’s a lot of value in it. Disney+ was one of the greatest gifts 2019 brought me.
If you don’t already know about it, Common Sense Media is great at providing reviews for books, movies, TV, games, etc. to help you take a stab at age-appropriateness and it tells you about the objectionable content, positive messages, etc. in almost any content you’ll search for.

Youtube:
Remember, Youtube is a very dangerous place. Do not let your kids roam freely here.
-The Art for Kids Hub shows a dad doing cute and fun drawings with his kids. We’ve had a lot of fun with these.
-Hoffman Academy has excellent free piano lessons on Youtube. The kids learned a song on the first lesson, and even I learned how to play Hedwig’s Theme!
-Jamie Oliver has great cooking videos, and many of them feature cooking with his kids.
-Ted-Ed has helpful animated videos for explaining a gamut of topics. Recommended for older teens or selectively with younger kids.
-BibleProject can’t be beat for making beautiful and insightful videos about the Bible and biblical themes. They’re interesting, brief, deep, scriptural, worshipful, and my kids and I enjoy them equally, I think.

Streaming Videos on Amazon Prime:
-Some PBS shows are annoying, but some are golden and truly educational. The kids and I are all obsessed with Odd Squad, and I’m shocked at how many animal facts my kids have retained from Wild Kratts.
-Shaun the Sheep is mindless but also harmless. It’s so cute and funny for all ages.
-Annedroids is a show about kids who befriend a robot and teaches lots of STEM concepts, and Dino Dana is a really sweet family show about dinosaurs. Though the characters can be kind of annoying, it’s not the worst show for kids maybe ages 3–11.
-If you’re a Christian, the Torchlighters series is a very gripping (albeit poorly animated/voiced) series that teaches history for viewers 9+ (or younger with discretion!) Prime Video also has some Adventures in Odyssey movies now, too. Some are dated, some are quite good.
Older kids (and undoubtedly you as well) will get a lot out of the creatively produced, entertaining series For the Life of the World that will change your whole perspective on the world and Christianity. I’ve watched the whole series three times and it explodes my brain every time. I showed it to my younger kids, too, but next time I’ll skip Episode 2.

-DVD recommendation: Though it’s old, Carmen Sandiego ($8 for the whole series) is somehow extremely favored and rewatchable for my kids. It’s very educational, too.

Lighting Round of Resources

Now for a lightning round of favorite resources for all ages (unless otherwise noted.) I’m sure I’m missing good ones — please comment what you would recommend! — but these are just a few. I’m not doing affiliate links on this post because I want you to trust my recommendations.
Also, we currently live in a 386 sq-ft RV (and love it), so please know that I’m only mentioning toys, books, and games that I enjoy so much that we’ve kept them even in the small space!

Art Supplies:
We love gel crayons because they’re so vibrant and they don’t break. It takes a really long time (like, months) for them to dry out without caps, too. I greatly appreciate that this set includes a box. (Twistables are a much cheaper option but the color potency isn’t near the same.)

The watercolor palette I mentioned earlier is great, but I prefer this set if you’re willing to invest a bit more because they seem to be a bit higher quality and I can limit how many colors we use at once, which is perfect for letting a one-year-old paint. I cut this watercolor paper into many pieces (about six per page) to stretch it for a long time. (Yes, I brought my guillotine paper cutter in the RV. It’s essential to my life.) As far as brushes, I prefer very small sizes and I’ve found that Walmart has the best deals on detail brushes ($4 for a whole bunch.)

Open-Ended Toys
-Lacing cards are great for 2–5!
-LEGOs are, of course, wonderful. (Duplos for younger kids, normal LEGOs for 4+.) I don’t recommend buying a new set; your local thrift store or Facebook marketplace should sell a whole box of ’em for a tiny fraction of the price of a new set. You can buy a 121 piece set for $8 though. I like books like this one that show you things you can make with LEGOs you already have; that’s what makes them such an open-ended toy!
-Tangrams are great for all ages. My younger daughter has this one, older daughter has this one, and in the past I bought rubber for myself so I could make tangram stamps like this.
-I’m shocked by how much my kids love their geoboard. They stretch rubber bands into all kinds of shapes on a pegboard and they never get tired of it. I like it, too.
-Stacking toys are fantastic for limitless play and helping kids improve their attention spans. Rock Blocks are pricey but a fun zen challenge, even for my husband and I. My kids really enjoy this stacking rainbow, especially in conjunction with Lil’ Woodzeez (which I prefer to buy used.) As you can see from the picture below, there are lots of ways to play with it:

Reading Together

Zoom to the library while you still can! Choose picture books for your kids that look interesting to you. Sarah Mackenzie, my favorite homeschool speaker/writer, has a wealth of booklist recommendations for all ages. Some of our favorite author-illustrators that we go to repeatedly are Tomie DePaola, Bill Peet, John Hendrix,

-You Choose, You Choose Your Dreams, and You Choose In Space are picture books that really feel like toys. The art is so creative and there is so much to look at. My kids and I love daydreaming about whether we’d live in a cottage, hotel, or treehouse, and they seriously spent an hour with my husband imagining what weird things would happen to them if they ate this or that funny-looking alien food.

-The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson is fantastic. He would admit that the first book is a little silly, but he begs you to stick with them and I promise they get absolutely gripping. I enjoyed them by myself as an adult and then later to my young kids, so though they’re a large fantasy series, even your 5-year-old might love ’em. (There are some relatively violent and scary parts, but when you read aloud, you can just skip those parts!) Plus, they just got updated with new art. And there’s a short film you can watch after reading the first book! Here’s a pic of my kids when we finished reading the whole series. (We did it in only 2 months! It’s how I got through the third trimester of pregnancy with Baby #4, ha!)

-The kids and I enjoyed The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton for its super-original story and beautiful illustrations in each chapter. Plus the paperback is only $6 on Amazon!

-Some Bible storybooks that my younger kids enjoy looking through are The Biggest Story, The Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible, and The Big Picture Story Bible. I’ve tried at least a dozen different storybook Bibles; I need to write a whole post about these!

Games

-Sleeping Queens is a simple math-based card game for younger kids, but I personally enjoy playing it every single time. (I don’t enjoy Go Fish or Chutes and Ladders, in case you think I’m just some simplistic adult who needs to grow up, ha!)

-Scrambled States is a fun U.S. geography game that even little kids can play with some teamwork, but that most ages can play competitively.

-Catan Junior is a favorite for my kids 5+ and it involves just enough luck that we get really competitive with it. Unlike the time-intensive adult version, the rules are simple and the game board is already assembled.

-For older kids and adults (maybe 10+), Hive Pocket is like chess, except simpler, totally portable (I’ve played it at airports and in hospitals), and extremely addicting.

Educational Books That Your Kids Will Spend a Long Time Flipping Through

-Maps is an enormous book that contains maps of dozens of countries and little sketches of foods, animals, cultural symbols, landmarks, and interesting things that set that country apart. It’s a great curiosity-stoker; we love to just look at all the details then say, “Ooh let’s look up pictures of that!”

-Dinotopia is a beautifully written and illustrated book that makes you feel like it’s a real place. I like how it’s just written as a naturalist’s descriptions of a dinosaur utopia and it doesn’t have bad guys. We love flipping through it.

-A Child Through Time is really neat because it shows us what life might have been like for kids throughout the planet and at different times in history. It’s super interesting and totally packed with content. I love anything that grows our perspective of the world and helps us love and understand others better. As Christians, we also love reading and praying through Window on the World.

Well, I know that was a lot of information, but I hope it helped! May this be a sweet time for you all!