help your child do their homework

How Can You Help Your Child With Their Homework?

Homeschooling our children means that, technically, every bit of schoolwork we complete is homework. It’s all done at home.

But, it’s that experience, paired with the years we’ve spent in public school, that has given us insight into how to best understand how to help our children with their homework.

help your child do their homework

Help Your Child With Their Homework

Homework is a big part of children’s education. It helps them to learn more about what they’re taught in their school lessons and can encourage independent learning which is useful for later in their education.

However, in their younger years, they’ll need your help and support, and homework will become a significant part of both of your weeks.

Here’s how you can make the process run smoothly.

Create a study area

Having a quiet, productive space to sit and do homework is a smart move. If you have a spare bedroom or space in your home office, you could set up nice large desks with a chair for them and another for you.

To make the room pleasant and inspiring, you could hang quotes about learning on the walls and incorporate plants (which have been shown to boost mood and productivity).

Purchase the stationery and equipment you’ll need, and organize it in a way that it’s easy to access.

Lots of parents do homework with their children in the living room or at the kitchen table, but if you have a busy household it can be easy to get distracted.

Somewhere that you can shut the door and focus on your child can be hugely beneficial.

Improve your own knowledge

For most of us, it’s been a long time since we were in any kind of formal education. Sometimes you might be just as stumped by your child’s homework as they are!

Have fun with it and use it as a chance to improve your own education, when all of us have access to the internet it’s not difficult to do some research and find out some extra information on a topic. This can make it easier to explain things to your child.

Getting tech savvy is important too, you don’t need to be a genius but you should have the basics down.

If you use an Apple computer, do you know how to copy and paste on Mac? Do you know the keyboard shortcuts to make navigating your way around quicker and easier?

Teach yourself using articles and videos, or consider going on a short course if you’re really clueless.

Establish a routine

Children always do best with a routine. They might try and fight it, but they’re at their happiest when they know what they’re meant to be doing and when, and this is something to bear in mind when doing homework.

Perhaps you could get into a routine of when they get home from school, give them an hour to relax and then dinner, bath, and homework. Maybe it could be an hour or two on the weekend depending on the kind of deadlines they’re given.

Either way, setting a rough time to get it done can be helpful.

Use encouragement

None of us like to feel as though we’re failing at something, and so if your child struggles with homework, getting frustrated and them feeling like they can’t do it is a one-way ticket to tantrums.

You might even find that once they’ve had a few negative experiences surrounding homework, you can struggle to get them to do it again. If they’re stumped, try and find a different way to explain to them.

Keep your cool, if they’re really struggling and it doesn’t seem to be sinking in, put it away and have a chat with their teacher explaining the situation.