COVID-19 has left us in very uncertain times. It got really intense, really quickly and as much as I’m happy that the Canadian government has taken it as seriously as they have, it has left a lot of uncertainty with work. Both myself and my husband are now home, which my cat is LOVING, but it feels weird. Weird not to see my friends and family. Weird not to be able to go out to stores and restaurants whenever I want. Weird to not be able to go to the gym and see my personal trainer. I’ve been with her for over 5 years and I this is the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other. I feel like I took all these for granted now that it’s been taken away from me. I imagine all of you are feeling the same way, as are our students and their parents. In this post, I’ll walk you through how to get started with Virtual Teaching.
To try to keep things simple for now, I am using literacy and math activities I’ve previously made and posted in my store. My teaching partners and I have discussed what we plan to send home each week. This is what we’ve decided on:
- 3-4 French activities
- 3-4 English activities
- 5 Math activities
- 5 Play-based challenges
- Read every day
We try to make the activities a mixture of hands on activities and paper based activities so that families can pick and choose what works best for them. One of our biggest hits was a blueberry muffin recipe I put in there for hands on measurement practice.
We’ve also been recording a variety of videos for the kids to watch. It helps them feel more connected to us and we get a lot of positive feedback! I was very reluctant at first, but I’m glad I did it. I get to continue teaching the class directed drawings, and it’s the easiest way to do my letter sounds lessons.
We have made it clear that we don’t expect parents to complete all of it, rather we are offering many different ideas so that the kids/parents have choices on what to work on. Some parents are taking cues from their children and offering them learning opportunities based on their interests and many other parents are choosing to supplement what we send with workbooks they’ve purchased.
I hope this has been helpful with framing your mind around how to organize virtual teaching in a Kindergarten environment.
