It’s just so easy to have the homeschool students find out the right answers, to the hundreds of questions that they have, online. It saves the homeschool teacher the time and effort to get the information and make it available to them in an interesting manner. Yet, the more the children begin to depend on their screen of choice, the less connected they become to human interaction.
Strike a Balance
In today’s world it is unrealistic to expect that your children will not ever be online. That doesn’t mean that you should give up on any sort of regulation of their screen time. The idea is always to strike a balance between the amount of time that they dedicate to their screen, and the time that they spend having fun offline. If you think that they are spending too much time online, taking away the screen is not the only solution. You need to ramp up other activities that they enjoy offline.
Create No Technology Areas and Times
They may need the phone to find out a quick query, but make it clear that they can only do so in certain areas of the home and at specific times. Having easy access to screen 24/7 is an absolute No! So the kitchen and dining table can be absolutely tech free during meal times. The homeschool classroom can be a tech zone for the duration of actual learning via the internet. Similarly you can set up tech times and areas all through the day and in all the rooms of the house.
Have Them Create Games
One of the prime reasons that children want the internet and screen access is because they are bored. Make a rule that they need to create a game each time they come and tell you that they are bored. It can be a physical game involving some some sports equipment like a hoop or a ball. Or it could be a board game which they can play using dice and counters. It would also be possible for them to create a game in the form of a maze or a puzzle to be solved.
