Making the most of working and learning from home is all about attitude. Approaching this new (and temporary) situation with positivity and a sense of adventure, even humour, can make it a time of adventure and connection.  First thing that all members of the family need to accept is that the usual routines will not longer apply and everyone will ned to make compromises. But viewing these compromises as opportunities for kindness, gratitude and togetherness, will go a long way toward ensuring a positive experience for all.
With this as the focus, I have collated suggestions about Daily Routines below that could help your family along the way. Share this post with your friends and families in your community, and let us support as many people as we can, together.

Routines are important so that everybody knows what to expect. Adults have routines at work, children thrive on routines at school. Now these two diverse routines collide as parents work from home and school close indefinitely.
So a new routine that accommodates everyones needs at a minimum, needs to be drawn up.
Everyone in the house needs to be involved in this draft because it effects everyone. When you don't have full buy-in from the whole family, an imposed routine will soon unravel.

A daily routine can include elements like family time, independent time, learning time, work time, exercise time and house keeping time at a minimum. Then, each family will have their own unique elements to fit within those. Depending on your family, elements of the routine can be successfully combined, like family and exercise time or house keeping and learning time, even work and independent time. Develop a routine that suits your family's needs and lifestyle, try it out and then make justifiable modifications as needed.

Depending on your job and working style, your work time requirements will differ. Some people need complete isolation to carry out work tasks, while others can comfortably carry these out at the kitchen bench on a laptop. Set yourself strict work hours that do not exceed what you would normally do at the office. When you have elementary aged children at home (or younger), you will need to modify your work hours / times around meeting their needs as well. Trying to do both simultaneously, usually doesn't work well. However if aspects of your job can involve your children's help, this is a great opportunity for them to learn about the working world and also a bit more about what you do all day while they are at school, leading to a greater level of understanding and intergenerational empathy. 

If and when schools close for health and safety reasons, parents will suddenly need to play a greater role in maintaining their children's academic level (if not progress) and interest in learning. This can be daunting for many parents, whose priority centres around maintaining their jobs and income, or who may not even be able to stay home because of the nature of their work, or who are looking after several children within their family / community networks while other parents are still attending to their jobs for as long as possible.
Your first port of call is your child's school communication system. Schools across the world are requiring that their teachers supply learning guidance for their classes, to maintain a sense of communication, belonging and community.
This can come with its own challenges because every household is different, their access to resources differs greatly and each family's routine is unique. Saying that, learning time still needs to be built in. Don't get stressed out by work that teachers post for your children,  make sure that you give honest feedback about what is working for you and your family. Teachers would rather know how the planning they provide for distance learning is being received and why. They are well versed in differentiating their programmes within the classroom already, so it would only follow that the same would be required for distance learning classrooms as well. 
You can also read my next post for a list of  open-ended home learning ideas to try.

These 3 areas of the routine are also important. When families are required to stay isolated from others, tolerance levels for those that they are with, can quickly waver. Even more so when jointly drafted routines are not respected by members of the family. Times that the family spend together, free of work and pressures, just to have fun  and play, can help to diffuse any building tensions. These times can be spread throughout the day and coincide with snack and meal breaks.
Exercise is also imperative. If you can, go fo a walk or bike ride, outside in the fresh air. If not, then explore your garden or start a yoga or gentle exercise routine that you build onto each day. Aim to include the whole family,  ensuring that everyone is getting some activity to help elevate their mood and health levels.
With people spending a lot more time in their homes, the place can quickly get untidy and messy. Everyone needs to play a role in maintaining the home and time needs to be set aside for this. Assign chores to each family member and  a time that these need completing by. Giving children house keeping tasks teaches them responsibility, independence and a sense of community spirit - all working together for the greater good.

My final word in this post needs to be that nothing lasts forever so these challenging times too shall past. And if you approach it with hope, positivity and kindness, you will come out on the other side with an even stronger family bond, then what you started with.
Take care of each other!
Kia Kaha (stay strong)
​Mea

“Creativity is as important  now in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” Sir Ken Robinson

Six years ago, I specialised in teaching visual art and digital media across kindergarten to Year 6 (ages 4-11). Again, I applied the same methods. As a specialist you may see every student in the school but for very little time. Personally, I may see a student for 18 periods a year. Hardly enough time to scratch the surface of all the possible skills that live within these subject. 
So I modelled my approach on the way that I used to teach reading. 

My aim is to awaken a love for creating.
 
I see my role as establishing the context and providing the support for students, that inspires them along the path of personal exploration/s and to build their confidence for self expression and communication through a visual medium. 

Once they experience that intrinsic satisfaction unique to a creative experience, they are hooked. 
For me the true test of whether this method works is not the work produced in class, often skill based explorations due to minimal time and curriculum goals. It’s the independent self directed work that students take on beyond the art room - the creativity they apply to classroom work or home based pursuits. It’s the parent who tells me about how their child won’t let them go past a stationery or art supply store without buying something or asking for solutions to store the growing piles of artwork at home. It’s the child that is conceiving, prototyping, creating and making solutions to everyday problems. It’s the child that sees such problems as opportunities to be innovative. 

When they draw a corner sun, respond positively - they noticed there is a sun in the sky and they are trying to communicate that their picture is about daytime. Perhaps run a workshop on the many ways artists show suns in their work, or the positions within your picture where the sun can be located, based on the time of the day. Take students outside with view finders so they can see that the sun is usually too high in the sky to be included in the frame of their picture. 

Allow children to learn through discovery.

While we as teachers may see these elements on repeat, year in and year out, for each young artist these representations and explorations in self-expression, are new.
Don’t rush children through their childhood to meet adult aesthetic expectations sooner than they need to.
Instead, appreciate that they are expressing joy and understanding of the world around them through these elements, and look for opportunities to inspire individual growth.

Art with Mea
IG: timea_oneteachersjourney, artwithmea

References:
Artwork created by 5 & 6 year olds in my art room
*TAB website https://teachingforartisticbehavior.org/index.html
**child v. adult aesthetics in visual art
In visual arts education, educators can sometimes place more importance on art media and technique, with teachers consequently limiting and hindering a child’s creativity processes with adult-imposed goals or agendas (Plows, 2014; Vecchi, 2010; McWilliams, Brailsford Vaughns, O’Hara, Novotny & Kyle, 2014).
​Parent, educator or school-based achievement learning agendas in the arts must be discouraged. 
Jenson, K. (2018). Early childhood: Learning through visual art. He Kupu, 5 (3), 75-82. Available at https://www.hekupu.ac.nz/article/early-childhood-learning-through-visual-art

Click the button below to be taken to our lesson plan SUMMER SPARKLE. One of the developments that it promotes is to celebrate those corner suns and modify them through the lens of an artist. These examples were created by 6 year olds in my art room.