When you want to help your child with his or her homework, you need to start when your child is ready. The classification of homework can be like any educational work done in the home. Homework is different for different ages – for toddlers, it may be spending like 30 minutes reading to them, finger painting, playing with pots and pans or musical instruments, play dough, colouring with crayons. If none of these is available, toddlers can play with sand and water among several others.
All these are done for your child to complete an activity that is educational. Most of these activities are done with the help of the parent, thereby increasing the parent-child bond, as their homework gets harder and longer.
After a while, your child starts preschool, kindergarten and then college and they will be bringing home homework. This ranges from reading, colouring, and other activities not completed in class. Others include learning letters and numbers which moves on to writing and tracing.
Below are some tips on making homework stress-free:
1. Be Organised and Reward Good Work
The more your child grows, the more complicated homework he receives. The child may have a planner, but in case this is not possible, you can buy a whiteboard to alter the homework from week to week. You should reward your child for doing well in homework for further encouragement and praise.
2. Develop a Homework Habit
As a parent, you should get into the healthy habit when starting homework with your child to make education fun and not a chore. Make sure you help your child with the homework as soon as the homework comes in; you can also let your child do it if it is not a joint venture. This will help your child stay organised and always prepare rather than rushing at the last minute.
3. Never Do the Work for Them
No matter how simple or complicated the homework is, do not do the work for your child instead teach them how to do it. You can always add up and read it to them, but your children will only know it if they sound it out or add it up by themselves. Praise them when they get the right answer.
4. Help Them When They Need Help
When your child needs help, make sure you pay attention wholeheartedly. When you are helping your child with homework, you must put away your phones and focus on your child. If you don’t concentrate on them while they are doing their homework, they will not focus on their homework. As a mother, a kitchen is a right place for you to help your children with their homework. Here, you will focus and answer their questions quickly.
5. Make Homework Fun
Do not let your kids find homework a boring way to learn. Introduce different fun ways to make them enjoy the homework. Your child will remember all these moments when they move on in life. Make use of this homework time to increase the bond between your child and yourself when you still have them at home.
