If you’re like most people, then you probably find it quite hard to concentrate fully from home. Whether it be work, studies, or even pleasure reading, getting yourself to focus at home may sometimes prove difficult. This is reinforced when there are people at home, noise, and movements. The different distractions make it really hard to put your mind to something.
If you’re an adult with this problem, imagine how much harder it is for children. The home environment is usually too cosy to instil a learning mindset, and this calls for the need to change a few things if studying is actually to take place in that atmosphere.
Here are a few things that you can do to make your home conducive to learning.
- Set a timetable
The house has very many distractions and especially for children. To say the least, there are electronics, T.V, and friends to play with. This means that if your child is to reap the benefits of online learning or any other form of learning from home, they need a schedule. If you don’t work with one then a lot of duties may end up being neglected. Your child may end up not doing their homework and assigned tasks, or even missing out on some classes. On the other hand, rest is equally as important. As they say, all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. The schedule must also set aside time to play, rest, and eat.
- Ensure that your child sleeps enough
As a way of enhancing studying from home, sleep is essential. While there is no hard and fast rule, the general guide is children aged between three to six years need 10-12 hours; those aged between seven to twelve years need 10-11 hours and teenagers around eight to nine hours. Adequate sleep is important to improve their memory, remove toxins that build up while awake, boost their mood, and sharpen their concentration.
- Silence
I know it’s hard to actually maintain silence when you’re at home, but you need to do it for your child who is learning from home. This allows them to focus on what they are learning and being taught.
A study actually found that silence improves memory and boosts brainpower. But it goes beyond this. When your child realizes that you are actually maintaining silence so that they can focus on their work, they will feel respected and be motivated to do better. So for the period that your child is studying, cultivate a habit of being as silent as possible and limiting the movement around the house. Give them the space to learn.
- Reward them
Let’s be honest. We all need the motivation to go about our daily lives. If you want to encourage your child to study at home, then you need to reward them. It doesn’t have to be expensive gifts. In fact, you can even reward them by allowing them to play for an extra thirty minutes. You can treat them to their favourite meal. This will help to motivate them to do better in terms of school work.
- Dressing up to learn from home
My younger brother has been learning online for a few weeks now, and one of the regulations is that they must wear full school uniforms before coming to the screen. At first, when I saw this I laughed, but then we realised that when he started wearing the uniform he took the whole thing more seriously. The dressing is important for mood setting.
In fact, a study concluded that the subjects of the experiments made half as many mistakes on an attention-demanding task when wearing a white lab coat. On another attention task, those told their lab coat was a doctor’s coat performed better than either those who were told it was a painter’s smock or those who merely saw a doctor’s coat on. So to reinforce learning from home, you might just want to consider asking your child to dress up as though they are going to school.
