Homelearning For Working Mums

I don't profess to be a wonderful mum. To me, fantastic mothers are those without domestic helpers and yet ensuring that the house is spick and span, who homeschool their children and who are loving wives and devoted daughters, with warm delicious meals on the table as their husbands reach home from work and who gives a nice allowance to their parents from their husband's paycheck - and yet looking gorgeous without a hair out of place! Not me for sure!

For me, I hate housework, I cannot live without my helper who does all my yucky housework, and I need my mum to help care for the kids when I am at work.

However, I try my best to be a good mother in whatever little ways I can. Hence, I spend as much time with my children (and hubby, of course) and I prefer to teach my children myself (for now) without needing to bring them for enrichment or tuition classes, except for skills-based classes that I can't teach, like ballet, piano and tennis, etc.

Yet, I know in this harsh academic environment where meritocracy is paramount, it is rather hard for our children to enjoy learning in school. Hence, I started a homelearning programme early last year when Big Bee went to primary one - to plug in the gaps that the formal school system cannot fill.

As a working mother, I must profess that it is challenging to do structured activities in the evenings after work because 1) the kids are tired after a long day in school or even at home, and 2) I am tired after a long day at work. But as mothers - working or stay home mums - we know we are focused on one objective, that of ensuring a rich learning environment for our children. And we know we are resilient from all those nights of caring for our crying babies, breastfeeding them, changing them. So, focus and perseverence are my 2 mottos when coming to homelearning, especially for working mums, where we only have that pathetic 2 to 3 hours of time with our children after work.

I am no expert, but this is my personal survival kit for homelearning with my Bees as a working mum. I typically have only a sad 2.5 hours with the Bees every weekday evening, and I only use 1 hour or lesser every night on learning activities. The rest of time is spent on casual games and fun, which is just as important for bonding.

1) It is absolutely fundamental to have a lesson plan for the theme that I work on, so that I can refer to it and select the activity of the day almost immediately, as I do not have time to research on the homelearning activities on a daily basis. It also helps me to put into perspective a big picture of what the learning outcomes are.

I usually spend about a week structuring a lesson plan for the theme of the month, and I arrange activities according to the multiple intelligences format, ensuring that there are enough activities for each intelligence.

2) I will select the daily homelearning activity from work, or during dinner time. This may change depending on a) the Bees' and my energy levels b) our moods (whether we feel like crafting or writing, Chinese or math etc) and c) level of pre-preparation for that particular activity.

3) I try to include easy activities for weekday nights, meaning crafts or activities that need minimal pre-preparation work. In fact, most of our homelearning activities involve a lot of creation by the Bees, which makes things a lot easier for me and which help foster their innovative skills too.

4) I spend very little time on each activity, given the short attention of Little Bee and given the long day in primary 2 for Big Bee. Hence, it is usually 20 to 30 minutes for Little Bee, and another 20 to 30 minutes for Big Bee. On days where exams are nigh, I will go through Big Bee's academic schoolwork with her as she doesn't attend tuition yet, and she will grouch about how her mei mei can work on fun crafts whereas she has to do corrections, poor baby.

If it is a group activity, we will usually spend 30 to 40 minutes on it, and that's it!

There - seems very easy, isn't it? It is really effortless to do structured homelearning at home for working mums, so long we have a good lesson plan. On days when I am on leave, I can have the luxury of researching for activities on my whim and fancy, but on working days, I have absolutely no time to do such researching, so a lesson plan is truly helpful.

For activities that need some pre-preparations, like dioramas, I will work on these materials after the kids are asleep.

It just takes 20 to 30 minutes a day for homelearning. If done on a daily basis, this cumulative effort can be seen very evidently, compared to when we just chill the entire evening in front of a TV with our kids. On nights when I am really tired, I will just read more to them, or I let them doodle and paint. As mothers, I guess we know better than to give ourselves undue pressure, because if we feel stressed doing such activities with our children, it will never be fun nor effective for us nor the kids!

That being said, I still admire these stay-home mothers who do not have helpers at home, and yet had bravely started their own businesses fueled by their passion in early childhood development! These are Amazonian mothers indeed - Pauline and Rachel from My Playschool.net and Domestic Goddess. It is amazing how they are courageously living their dreams!