During a time of school closures we know how hard it can be for parents to keep their own routine on track with schools closed, parents have to balance teaching, working and entertaining all at once. We realised that parents are doing their absolute best to keep their kids engaged, motivated to learn and stay productive while trying to keep it together. 

We’ve done our research and realised that parents are searching online for things to keep their kids focused and active, so at Ultra Education we thought it would be a great idea to provide a library of useful links and advice to support parents with managing their kids during self-isolation.

The biggest opportunity given to us all during this challenging period is time. We advise that parents should do some individualised learning with their kids, teaching and allowing the kids to experience new and different things daily. It will also help with expanding their imagination and creativity. 

We believe individualised learning will help with family bonding, however, we know while this can be a great opportunity for family bonding and quality time together, it can also be tough. To ease the tension, parents could work in shifts and take turns to supervise their children. It will also give the other parent some alone time to recharge. However, kids should have some fun too and should have days where they are allowed to do whatever they want (within a certain limit of course). This would be a perfect time for parents who are working from home to get some work done. 

Whilst having fun is great, it’s also important that parents are monitoring their families physical and mental health and find different ways to incorporate this into their daily schedule. It’s also important for families to have some down time and just chill, remember it’s all about balance. Don’t forget the goal here is to survive the lockdown and social-distancing, of course. All we need to do is find fun things to do at home, and replace our outdoor life with indoor activities. 

We must use this time to come out of this stronger and wiser than before. Despite everything negative that has happened because of the Coronavirus, they are also positive things that have occurred and because of this we’ve learnt to: 

• Appreciate time with our family
• Savour every moment and memory 
• Be thankful for the NHS (we couldn’t do this without them)
• Self-love (learn how to be content alone)
• Strengthen our human connection (people around the world uniting through music and exercise) 

By staying safe and not panicking, staying active while staying home, having things to do at home, and maintaining social contacts, we can survive this crisis together.