SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For nearly a month in California, parents have been asked to be part-time teachers in addition to managing their regular work responsibilities during the coronavirus pandemic.
While teachers at school districts across the region are working hard to maintain as much of a sense of normalcy as possible, many parents are running out of ideas.
Fortunately, Angela Williams, a teacher at Stonegate Elementary in West Sacramento, has a seemingly never-ending supply of ideas to make learning less work and more fun.
She said baking is a great place to start.
“So with recipes, you’ve kind of got a two-fold situation,” explained Williams. “You’ve got where if they’re going to write a recipe, they’ve got to be able to think about all the steps that go into it, even the little steps. Then you also have thinking about math. If you tell your kid 'I want to triple this recipe and I’ve got a third cup of butter I have to use. How much total butter am I going to use?' So you’re working on multiplying fractions.”
Williams explained scavenger hunts are also a great tool for multiple forms of learning.
“There’s just so many ways that you can use a scavenger hunt that gets the kids moving,” said Williams.
She said it’s good for both young kids and older ones, too.
“If you’re thinking about sight words or letter recognition, you could have the kids be thinking about, well, what does a glass start with?” suggested Williams. “Well, glass starts with 'G.' And so have them find something that starts with the letter G. You could do a states and capitols scavenger hunt. You know you put a state in one area. Now you have to go find the capitol to that state.”
Different everyday tasks can be harnessed then scaled up or down depending on education level.
“If you need to go grocery shopping and you know one container of toilet paper is $4.59, but I want to stock up and buy three of them, you can have them start working on multiplying with decimals. But then you can then say for your older kids, say, 'now there’s an 8% tax.'”
Learning can even be happy when a family is taking a break.
“Like setting them up with a movie but then asking them questions about it,” said William. “Who were the main characters? What are the main characters doing? What’s the problem that you see...in the movie? How would you solve the problem? Would you solve it differently?
Williams also suggests letting them try on different future jobs.
“Make them a news reporter and have them journal everything. Because this is history-making. These kids are now part of history and they’ll be in the history books about the pandemic of 2020.”
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