Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Do young children REALLY need E-learning right now?

I am seeing a lot of stress and anxiety from my educator colleagues right now about the pressure to provide “elearning” to their students currently out of their program due to Covid closures!

I want to preface my following statement with the knowledge that I truly value the importance of early learning, the FDK program and well vital role of public education in general. Education matters!

However RIGHT NOW, for the majority of Ontarian’s or Canadians, I believe this is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. So much fear and anxiety and added pressure of being home with multi aged children and not able to get out and do the things we’d would normally do to relieve that energy the create  ... the thought of trying to do formal “e learning lessons” with them well sorry but I honestly don’t think the majority of kids are going to be in that mental state right now to even process that method of learning! Nor are parents in the mental state to support them in that learning process - it’s just going to add more stress and anxiety to an already tumultuous situation for many 😞

Right now I personally think it’s more important for children and parents to be taking care of their MENTAL health than their academic progress! If you loose the first the later won’t matter and with the first you can CATCH UP on the later, later when life is back to normal!

Play board and card games, take this time to teach your kids to cook and bake as a family, read some books together, do art and sensory fun stuff like long baths there’s never time for when life’s busy and we rush through routines, make music and dance!

IMO right now in this unprecedented pandemic let the focus for parents to be to CONNECT with their loved ones and make POSITIVE MEMORIES to get them through this time! Please do not add mandatory e-learning to their already full plate ... there are lots of free only home school options for those who DO want to volunteer to continue to formally feed their brains ... but here is so much VALUE in PLAY TOO!

Let families choose to PLAY right now!

Let them learn THROUGH their play!

Margaret
Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much
Be Totallyawake4-life

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