Across the country, school ended abruptly in March 2020. With little to no notice, students and teachers were sent home for what turned out to be the rest of the school year. This, along with the pandemic, caused angst and confusion for many. And while your child may have struggled to keep up with distance learning offerings, I am confident that their learning never stopped.
First, let’s look at your own learning. Did you have to learn how to adapt your work in light of Covid-19? Many people had to adjust to working remotely, or otherwise working in new conditions, or even new roles or fields. Have you discovered different ways of communicating while social distancing? Have you mastered a new recipe, craft, game, or skill for yourself or to share with your family? Just as your own learning did not stop when you left the classroom for the last time, your child is still learning too.
Now let’s consider how your child is spending his time these days. Is he watching YouTube? Consider the content and what he might be learning from it. If you can get past some of the annoying YouTube personalities, you can probably see why certain videos have caught your child’s interest. One of my kids loves to watch sports videos and then he attempts the things he sees them do. His interest in gymnastics prompted my husband to build him a balance beam out of some leftover lumber he had from another project. Discovery often leads to further exploration rather than a single endpoint. Another child likes to watch videos of people playing video games. Apparently this is a very popular genre on YouTube! This type of content provides your child an opportunity to learn strategies they might not have discovered otherwise, and find ways to improve their enjoyment of and performance in the video game. For my son, it allows him to experience what mastery or mistakes look like in gameplay.
Are they crafting, gaming, building, or playing with their toys? Observe their processes of imagination, planning, storytelling, problem-solving, and collaboration. Most of my kids are young, pre-readers, and are starting to learn about playing formal games together. Games involve understanding and applying specific (often arbitrary) rules, impulse control for turn-taking, learning a sequence of steps to accomplish their goal, and more. And that’s just for a very basic game like Candyland or Chutes and Ladders. Physical games like tag and hide n’ seek help them learn about their bodies, interpret nonverbal communication, and how to navigate familiar and unfamiliar terrain.
Role-playing and imaginative play enable them to explore positions of power like teachers and doctors hold. They learn new vocabulary, like my three-year-old who became very interested in bones and learned several anatomical names. Upon returning from his annual physical exam, my husband asked him how it went, and my son thrust out his hands, wiggling his fingers in the air, and said, “Good, but he didn’t check my phalanges!”
The importance of reading cannot be overstated. Even if your child is not reading independently, or doesn’t seem to have a desire to read, fill their environment with books. Books they can flip through on their own, books that they need someone to decode for them, books with beautiful art and poetry, books they can listen to, and books where they can write (or dictate) their own stories, facts, jokes, songs, ideas, and more. One thing my kids have enjoyed while being “safer at home” is having their grandparents video themselves reading picture books. Maybe you can set up a Zoom call with friends or family members you haven’t been able to visit and have them share a book with your child that way.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “But what about academics?” Academics, in my estimation, are the result of filtering through life experiences to teach specific knowledge or skill sets that then must be reconstructed by the learner to apply them to future life experiences. I propose that rather than teasing such material out of life and presenting them in a vacuum (ie, the classroom), a better approach is to offer and engage the learner in as many life experiences as possible. The multisensory learning that takes place cannot be matched by textbook instruction with workbook practice.
Many parents are considering the best learning environment for their child in light of the changes (both known and unknown) that await in the upcoming school year. There are many challenges, to be sure, and we all have unique circumstances that inform our decisions. I hope you can find some comfort in knowing that your child is learning all the time, not just in a traditional classroom or during set times of the day.
