- Millions of parents might have thought that their children have missed something new leanings and have worried over it, as their children have been locked at home due to the global pandemic. Millions of Parents might have also been waiting for the schools to unlock to get their child's school learning environment.
Some parents might be worried about handling children for the whole day at home. This might be because of the lack of competencies and skills in terms of dealing with the children at home. But, parental worries and aspirations still remain unresolved due to the unprecedented outbreak of COVID19 worldwide. In fact, children missed out of the schooling might have more impacts mentally than academics as they are in agony being isolated from both academically and socially till date.
However, the primary concern is how we being a parent be able to keep our children engaged being aware of the current situations. Thus, the parenting in terms of reviewing, reflections and connections based on the child's past learning and skills come to be the first priority at the home context, unlike normal school learning. Because learning itself does not remain perfect and active unless children do not know real-life connections and identifications. This pandemic could be granted on a positive side for non-academic and academic learning focusing on life skills and exercising civic responsibility. And also benefiting children through play and fun activities.
This short write up would try to display a few hints for the parents doable at home.
Learning is vast and continuous, there is no limited prescribed curriculum for learning, and however, learning is something which we can’t limit that counts everything on the earth. It bases on the capacity of explorations- the more we explore we get to learn things.
Let the children play: Playing is very crucial and good learning for children. During play, children learn a lot of skills- physical, communication as well as social skills. While playing children also learn to help, to negotiate, to forgive and mingle with people.
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| Image source: QuoteGram |
Life skills: It is a human behaviour that helps an individual to deal with life challenges effectively and logistically. As per recommendation by the WHO, there are ten core life skills namely,
Self-awareness,
Empathy,
Critical thinking,
Creative thinking,
Decision making,
Problem-solving,
Effective communication,
Interpersonal relationship,
Coping with stress and
Coping with emotion.
The above skills could be learnt and understood by the parents through some books or online source (Refer further read at the end of the article), and work with children to bring these skills through activities. Millions of parents might lack technical competencies in terms of dealing with the children. So, despite these core skills, parents might focus on simple skills such as tying of shoelace, fruit peeling, arranging things, watering on the flower if available etc, which are also very essential skills for their life. These skills would help children do by themselves in future.
Civic Responsibility: Civic education is one of the prescribed curriculums for the school children focusing on enhancing positive and active citizen in a democratic country. It solely bases on positive responsibility towards the country. This pandemic could be taken as an advantage to reflect with children about what exactly civic responsibility is.
Currently, we can start with reflecting the government rules that have been imposed for the common citizen such as, wearing masks, not spitting in public places, not to come out of the home. Obeying such rules counts a civic responsibility. Parenting with such common and familiar rules would help a child to connect more precisely with their previous knowledge.
GLOBAL COVID19 PANDEMIC IS A PLATFORM OF EXERCISING AND IDENTIFYING LIFE SKILLS AND CIVIC RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE CHILDREN. AND LETTING THEM EXPLORE THEMSELVES AND THE WORLD THROUGH PLAY.
Further read, Click below:
Reflection is contributed by:
Satyasing Mushahary in consultation with Maaz Mohammed AQ
Both are alumni of Azim Premji University (2014-16)
