Our Home Learning Experiences

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When Raja Workplace got in touch with us to share our home learning experiences, I realised just how big a part of our year this has been. 

Home learning has come in different forms for us over the past year.

Last year, from late March through to September, I had the children at home with me. We had work set by school each week, and we were then free to go off and complete it whenever we wanted. We had calls from their teachers checking in with us, and I then kept us busy each day.

There was a lot more freedom and the kids spent time learning about things that they wanted to learn about, after covering the set work from school. We could create our own timetables and spent a fair bit of time outside too. 

Then this year, the kids didn’t return to school until March and we took on the challenge of a different kind of home learning.

This time, schools were prepared for home learning and as such, there was a lot more structure to the kids’ days.

They had online registration, and then my daughter had some online live lessons, my son had online story-time and they both had drop in sessions available and email access to their teachers.

This was more restrictive to me as both of them had to complete and submit their work online, taking up both the desktop computer and the laptop. I know we’re fortunate to have had these available for them to use, but it did mean I couldn’t work during the school day.

On the one hand, this was super frustrating, but on the other, it meant I was on hand to support them both in their learning as I moved my working day to after 3pm each day. I didn’t get through anywhere near as much work as I’d have liked to, but I kept everything ticking over. 

In addition to the technology, we then needed a few other bits and bobs to get their work done. As you’d expect, we do have a large amount of stationery, pens, paper and the like around so we were fine for supplies. The kids also have a lot of books, so they read every day, which also bought me a little time to catch up on emails.

Whilst my two kept on top of their home learning and were able to keep up with the work, there were tough days.

They didn’t want to be at home, away from their friends. And who can blame them?

They wanted to be able to learn surrounded by their classmates, bouncing ideas off one another rather than working in isolation.

And more importantly, they wanted to run and play with them, chat to them, have fun with them.

As their mum, I needed to keep their spirits up, along with their motivation to get their school work done. Not easy every day, when I wasn’t always feeling it myself! But we got there, we muddled through.

The best thing about it all was the extra time we had together, and knowing they were safe and sound at home with me.

The worst thing about home learning was seeing how much they missed their friends. And then the teachers, the structure of their days, and even the little things like school dinners and the school building itself. 

I am very aware that we could be home learning again at any point, as if one of their bubbles goes down, they will be back home with me for a while. As such, their homeschool stuff still inhabits my office, just in case we need to whisk it out once more! 

I am sharing all of this as Raja Workplace is currently running a survey campaign to understand how children have found having to work from home during the pandemic. We are taking part in this campaign which you can find out about here, and do check out the video as the kids enjoyed taking part in it.

How have your homeschooling experiences been? 

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