Creating a Quarantine Routine

Last Updated on 29 June 2020 by Colette

You might have seen in my recent post about coping with school closures that I talked about setting out a routine and explaining that I was going to involve the children in this to help give them ownership of it and so that, in theory, they won’t be able to argue when I make them stick to it. In part this is about making sure they get their school work done but it’s honestly more about our sanity – if we don’t have a routine, we’ll spend all day in our PJs watching TV and lovely as that may be for a few days, I know it wouldn’t do us any good long term.

We’ve planned our day out in half hour slots – the idea being that this will stop them from spending too long on one thing and getting bored. It might be that as the week goes by we realise we need to switch the slots around or that some of them are too long / too short – this is something we need to be flexible about, it’s all a learning curve. Even just from this today, we’ve noticed that school have set more work that we had anticipated so this has pushed our scheduling on a bit – clearly this is no bad thing!

I’ve done a separate timetable for each child as they will have different things they want to do and different amounts of school work to complete. I’ve also added a list of tasks for each of them to do before we start our day – simple things like brushing their teeth, making their beds or emptying the dishwasher. These tasks are normal day to day things that they do anyway but I wanted to put them on the timetable to help them see they needed to have them done before 9am so that we were ready to start.

As well as daily PE sessions with Joe Wicks, Cosmic Kids Yoga, reading, and their set school work, we’ve set aside some time for what we’ve called “Passion Projects”. By this I mean anything outside of the work that school has set that they want to learn about or practice.

We spent this morning with a pack of post it notes brainstorming ideas – everything from listen to a science podcast to learn how to edit video or plant seeds. (I had written quite a lot of ideas down on my phone already over the last few days to make sure they had plenty to go on!)

You can find our full list of our suggestions here!

Once we’d come up with our list of Passion Projects the kids added them to the gaps in their time table – spreading them out over the week. As mentioned earlier, my thinking behind this is that if they’ve taken ownership of planning their own time, they will be more likely to stick to the timetable. Having the timetable set out like that also means I can plan for any resources they might need and work out who will need my time – for example if Ben wants me to teach him to edit video, then the girls need to be independently occupied on something else during that session or if they want to play a board game it’s better that they all have that on the same slot and can play together.

Something else we have planned for each day is quiet time in their own bedrooms – this “sanity separation” means we all get a short break from each other’s faces but if I’m honest, is probably more for my benefit than theirs!

I’ve planned in a set break time (at around the same time as they would usually have it at school) for a snack and some fresh air – be that a walk around the block or playing in the garden (this morning they got their scooters out and whizzed around for 15 minutes while I put another load of washing on).

I’ve also put in a fixed lunch time so that I can bring them back to their tasks easily after they’ve eaten and played in the garden a bit more.

As with all things during this strange time we find ourselves in there is a need to be flexible and to adapt to change. Today the timetable was a success; the kids were happy that it had a similar structure to their school day and getting the “harder stuff” out of the way first worked well. I’m well aware that there was a significant level of novelty value this morning (proven by the fact they were all sat at the dining table in front of their laptops ready to start before 8.30am when I’m normally battling them out of the door at 8.45am!) But I’m hopeful that by keeping a balance of structure and variety in their days we can get through this in one piece!

(As I said in my last post about coping with school closures – do shout on twitter / instagram / facebook if you need help with figuring out a routine, what to do with the kids or if you need a bit of support with school work!)