Structure your day! Adapting Special Education strategies for at-home learning: A series.

“I go to school and Ms Bochek meets me at the door. I hang up my backpack and get out my sensory item. O’Canada plays and then I go to the carpet.”

So many components of a child’s day are structured for them. This structure provides them with a sense of comfort. The predictability that Mondays are Pizza day or that Thursdays we go to the library helps every child feel at ease as they move through their day.

Due to the current circumstances, we’re facing, a great deal of this structure has now been removed from our children’s lives, for reasoning that even adults are struggling to comprehend. We can’t go to school, there is an invisible sickness that we cannot figure out how to stop. What a way to turn the lives of our children upside down. Incorporating some of this structure back into their lives can help them approach learning from home with a stronger sense of comfort and familiarity, making things a great deal easier on everyone.

If you have been around social media since learning from home began, you may have seen some different examples of schedules being shared. The concept behind these are wonderful, but taking into account the unique needs of your child, personalization is paramount!

The amount of structure depends on your child - and you always know your child best!

Below I have laid out a variety of levels of structure you could incorporate into your at-home learning. Read through and decide what will work best for your child. I would recommend starting with a higher level of structure and reducing that amount if it is not needed, rather than the opposite.

Once again, you know your child best! Add, change or take away whatever details you see fit. For example, if your child uses time as a form of organization, include it on your schedule and if your child benefits from very detailed schedules, check out the next post about structuring tasks. You can create a simplistic day outline, and add the detail to each task in order to prevent overwhelming your child!