Coronavirus + Home office with Kids in Germany
Since last week, our kids stay home. My daughter's elementary school is closed, a teacher was tested positive with Coronavirus. The other two kids visiting Kita (kindergarten) because we limited our social interactions to help flatten the curve.
Additionally, thanks to Wayfair, I can work fully remotely during these times, which is both great and challenging. Remote work can be challenging, remote work with kids at home and with no way to go out brings it to different level.
So, what is our plan? We're following a mixture of Kita and Elementary school schedule:
- Keep morning routines, everyone gets dressed (same challenge as with home office)
- Start the "home school" with a Morgenkreis with all kids together
- Lectures from school for older & fine motorics drawing/painting for younger
- Short breaks during the day for everyone to refresh
- Longer breaks for lunch/snacks
- Reward the work to keep everyone motivated - nice words, candy and collectible cards
- Using online materials
List of online resources in German that we use, or plan to use:
- Khan Academy (multilingual) - Amazing for Math, with both interactive questions & videos
- Planet Schule - A huge amount of educational videos for kids
- Dinge Erklärt – Kurzgesagt - Complex topics in a nutshell
- Anton
- Schlaukopf.de
Most importantly, I have to thank my whole family for handling the situation, my wife for staying sane and pro-actively spending time with kids with all the stress around, the community that provides amazing & free resources and also the school teachers and other parents who are sharing more specific study materials and homeworks.