6 Tips to Help Young Scholars Adapt to Learning at Home

Learning from home through independent study programs like Compass Charter Schools (CCS), offers scholars and their families an incredible amount of freedom and flexibility. When managed properly, these freedoms can help create a truly personalized learning experience for scholars and help them succeed inside and outside of the classroom.

However, getting started with learning from home isn’t always easy, especially for young scholars. It takes time to adjust and transition to a new way of learning for young children and their parents or guardians. Here are our top six tips to help young scholars successfully adapt to learning at home:

Create a Designated Learning Space

We encourage families with young children to create a designated space for learning at home. By doing so, parents often help their young scholars differentiate between learning time and play time. Designated learning spaces can also help eliminate distractions and keep younger children more focused while they learn at home. Learning spaces don’t have to be complex, we usually just recommend that families have a clean table located in a relatively quiet place away from distractions like television, video games, and a few others. It may be helpful for a learning space to have a few key resources that are easily accessible for the scholar like the alphabet for spelling and numbers for counting. Families can choose to keep their learning spaces simple or get creative and add decorations, it all depends on personal preferences.

Make a Learning Schedule with Breaks

Learning from home is often an adjustment for both parents and their children. It takes time to get into a good routine and get comfortable with the lifestyle that comes with learning from home. We encourage parents to be patient during the transition process as their family adjusts to a new way of learning. A learning schedule is a simple, yet effective tool to encourage a smooth transition and make the adjustment of learning from home a bit easier. A learning schedule is simply an outline of the plans to learn while at home each day. Independent study programs like Compass Charter Schools (CCS) give families the flexibility to choose a start time for learning, to decide the order of school subjects that will be studied throughout the day, and the freedom to schedule breaks from learning as needed. Parents can seek advice from their scholar’s teachers and school counselors to create a learning schedule that best meets their child’s needs. We do encourage parents to include plenty of breaks within their learning schedule to help keep scholars engaged and actively learning throughout the day!

Celebrate Achievement

While learning from home, we believe it’s important that parents spend time celebrating their scholar’s accomplishments just as a teacher would at a traditional brick and mortar school. Families that choose to learn from home can celebrate their scholar’s achievements both inside and outside the classroom. Parents can consider hanging their scholar’s projects and assignments on display in a special place in the home like on a bulletin board or on the refrigerator. Parents with younger scholars can even celebrate when their child uses kind words or manners with other people. Achievement is the first core value at CCS, we encourage scholars to set goals and we support them as they remain dedicated to achieving those goals throughout their educational journey. We believe that celebrating scholars’ achievements encourages them to continually set new goals and become lifelong learners.  

Take it Slow

Parents who are new to learning from home with their children are often in a rush to get into a routine and successfully teach their children. While we celebrate their passion for guiding and supporting their child’s learning, we encourage parents to avoid rushing the process. We believe it’s important for parents to remember why their family decided to start learning at home. It’s sometimes because they wanted to escape the impersonal, hurried learning experience that can occur at brick and mortar schools. Young scholars take time to adjust to new routines and expectations. We encourage parents to take it slow and give their children and themselves time to adjust to a new way of learning.

Set Clear Expectations

Learning from home offers families the freedom and flexibility to learn when they want, where they want. This broad level of freedom can sometimes be a challenge for young scholars who may struggle with differentiating between learning time and play time while at home. We invite parents to set a few clear expectations to help their scholar stay focused and on track while learning at home. Parents can consider creating a short list of important guidelines or values that their scholar needs to follow during learning time. These guidelines don’t need to be complex or extensive, they are simply meant to help young scholars focus as they complete their assignments. Parents may want to consider displaying the learning schedule that they created in a place where their scholar can easily see it and follow along. By doing so, scholars learn to follow a schedule, get into a routine and understand each part of their school day. Parents can also talk about the importance of completing classwork and meeting assignment deadlines with the children. These types of conversations can help young scholars get into the routine of completing their work on time. These are all simple ways to help scholars develop key life skills for the future and stay on track while learning from home!

Attend Field Trips

While the scholars will spend most of their time learning at home, we believe it’s important that young scholars spend time exploring outside. Parents can take their scholars on school field trips to museums, national parks, aquariums, zoos, amusement parks and several other places to enhance their learning and create social experiences. CCS organizes several school field trips each month for scholars throughout California. These field trips help scholars of all ages, but especially young scholars, adapt to learning at home. They create immersive learning experiences and social opportunities so that they can make new friends and connect with their classmates. Attending field trips can help young scholars develop important social skills like sharing and taking turns. Plus, field trips give parents the opportunity to connect with each other to share their experiences and seek advice from others who are also enjoying the learning from home experience with their children.

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Compass Charter Schools (CCS) is a WASC-accredited virtual charter school that serves families throughout California. Interested in learning more about CCS’ flexible academic programs? Visit our website, or contact our enrollment team at enrollment@compasscharters.org or (877) 506-8631.