How to Keep Your Child Learning & Happy! at Home

Hello! Thank you for joining us today. We know how busy you are as parents of young children, particularly during these times with so much going on in the world. We want to make the session a really valuable use of your time, so we're going to jump right in. I'm Caroline Hu Flexer, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Khan Academy Kids.

Today, I am joined by my colleague Dan Tue, who will be moderating our questions later, and our special guest, Renee Scott. Renee is a long-time early educator and is the Early Education Program Director at Stanford University. She's been one of our main curriculum advisors as we've developed Khan Kids, and Renee and I are both parents. We will be talking about how to keep young kids engaged and learning at home while many schools are closed and families are going through a lot of transition.

This fall, we're a non-profit, and I'd like to thank our sponsors Bank of America, AT&T, Google.org, Novartis, and Fastly for their support of this webinar and our other distance learning resources. A few other notes: this webinar will be recorded, and we'll be sending a copy to you via email in a few hours. If you have questions, please enter them in the question box. We'll save time at the end for live Q&A.

Today, we'll be focusing mostly on the youngest children, ages two through seven, so preschool through grade one. Let's get started! I am thrilled to have Renee with us here today. Can you share a little bit about yourself and your background?

Sure! Thanks, Caroline. I am a lifelong teacher. I started long ago as a swim instructor when I was in high school and just kept on that teaching path. Now, I've taught kindergarten, first grade, fourth grade, sixth grade, and I'm currently teaching teachers how to engage young children with reading and math specifically in pre-K and kindergarten and first grade. As you mentioned, I’m also a mom. My kids are now a teen and a preteen, so I’ve seen a lot of stages with them.

Wonderful! Thanks, Renee. Parents of young children are typically the ones who are really stretched thin, even in the best of times. Right now, in this pandemic, they're juggling even more. So on top of work and childcare, there are heightened health, financial, and medical concerns. Now, with school closures, a lot of parents are managing distance learning for their young children. What's your big message to parents as they are getting through these times and want to keep their children learning and developing?

You're exactly right. It is a stressful time right now trying to figure out how to juggle things in a new way. Really, I think my big message is to all of you parents out there: you're already doing a lot. Give yourself some grace, and give your kids some grace too. It's a lot to take on, and here's the thing: kids are learning all the time, whether you're teaching them something or you're just hanging out with them doing something.

So there's a pretty good chance that some of those things that you're engaged in, for example, your bedtime routine, are actually engaging in learning. They're learning about time, they're learning about how to reflect on the day, and they're using language. Today, we're going to spend some time talking a little bit about what that might look like and how to insert some intentional language into how to support your learning development.

It's great! Can you give me some examples of some of these everyday activities and how you would use language as you go through this activity?

Definitely! One of the things that I like to remind myself of is that when you go to a preschool classroom, a lot of times you'll notice that kids are working in some sort of center and they're working with others. We call them work-play centers. Maybe they're working on a painting or they're listening to books with a friend or through a tape recorder. I like to think about working with young children even at home in these ways—to think about how to organize your day.

For example, just looking for opportunities, perhaps to use your language and language development and ask really good questions. I'm interested intentionally during an activity, such as bath time. It's a really great time to talk about maybe sensory skills and fine motor skills. Asking kids, “Hey, I wonder how do these bubbles feel? How do they feel to you?” You can introduce words like fluffy, wet, slippery. Those are really great words to practice, and it builds out their vocabulary.

Bath time is also a really great time to make up stories. Making up stories is brilliant for kids. It helps prep them for learning to read, for learning to write, for starting to understand things like history and social studies. It's one of those activities that's really fun when they're little that just has a ton of payoff and benefits.

So if your kids hop into the bath and they've got a fish and a frog, just say some really great questions to ask. You know, “Oh, what happens? Tell me a story about fish and frog,” and then keep the conversation going. “So what happens next? And then what happens? And tell me more about that.” If you can just keep your kids talking about something like that and perhaps use some of that more difficult language that they don't know yet and encourage them to use that in their speech, it works great.

Another great example of something that you're going to have to do anyway is brushing teeth. I know it can be a challenge, but it's also a great time maybe to practice math. You can set a timer that the kids can watch. They can count the timer down backwards, they can keep track of each other, counting down backwards, counting forwards. Maybe they can see how many times they can hop on one foot before they're done with their brushing.

I've heard a lot of kids sing their ABCs while they wash their hands. These are just some really easy but intentional ways to include a lot of the vocabulary, language, and math-type skills that are really going to help them when they get back into the classroom. One that we love at my house is baking, and I think a lot of folks feel like, "Oh, well baking's obvious because it involves measuring and pouring and things like that." But I think it's easy to forget things like, "Can you count how many blueberries we're going to put into each of the muffins and put them into the cups?" Sorting things is amazing for kids, and that's a natural way to get them sorting and get them thinking about dividing and grouping and using mathematical terms.

But they're doing it right there at your kitchen counter! Maybe you're making muffins for breakfast or for your neighbor to help them out. Those are easy ways to include that. Another one that's great is to get out the recipe and let kids look at it. If they can't read yet, that's okay! They can look for words that start with "M." They can look for how many ingredients. Show them where the ingredient list is, and sometimes they have numbers in front of them. Have them count out all the ingredients. Those are just some quick ways to do, to push these things into what you're already doing.

My daughter and I always like to sing songs. The other day, we had a conversation—she's a little older now, but we still like to talk about song lyrics. We were singing "The Muffin Man" song, you know, "The muffin man, the muffin..." and I was telling her I used to have this little boy when I taught kindergarten who just loved that song. I said, "But I always wondered about the word 'Drury Lane.'" I said, "It's a hard word to say, and 'Drury' sounds kind of dreary." So we had this whole conversation that included all this language, and that's the kind of silly conversation that ends up being something that includes a lot more vocabulary.

One more example in this area of just integrating stuff into the everyday: one of the things I love is thinking about ways to be intentional about eating. Maybe not always at the dinner table, but lunchtime or breakfast table is a great time to do this. Using that time for counting is a great example of putting something in there quickly! So you're handing out grapes to the kids and ask them, "How many grapes would you like?" and have them tell you, and then give them some grapes.

You can mix this up; you can give them what they asked for and have them double-check and see if you're right, or you can give them what they didn't ask for and have them double-check and see if they catch you. Kids really love that aspect of there's a game in it, you know? So anything can turn something into a game and make it playful; it’s great.

I love hearing your examples because it's comforting to hear that there is so much learning in terms of language development and early numeracy that can just come up in everyday activities and things. It's not like you have to have—you don't have to sit your child down, and in fact, if you just sit your child down and say, "You know, do this," it's probably not nearly as fun and engaging for them. I love how it should always be play-based for young kids, which is how we approach the learning in Khan Kids.

As an educator, what are some techniques that teachers use to keep kids engaged and learning through the day, especially as parents? You know, we're juggling work and multitasking and can't always be 100% focused on and playing with our kids all the time.

Definitely! One of the things—I mean, the reality is there's going to be periods during the day when you can't sit down and play with your child. You can't play a game with them; you maybe can't talk to them; you're on the phone. The first thing, again, I want to reiterate, that's okay! It's okay for your kids to have to hang out and entertain themselves for a while if that's what you need. Everyone's gonna be happier if you're feeling better about what you're doing too, so give yourself grace there.

But one thing that I do like to keep in mind, and you kind of alluded to this just a second ago, Caroline, about motivation, is that sometimes the second you ask a child to do something that they otherwise might do just for fun, it’s not that fun to them anymore. So it's a matter of trying to convince them that it's their idea!

Some of the things that have been found—actually, this always makes me think of my mentor, Deborah Stipek, because she does a lot of research on motivation with young children, and she really highlighted a few important things. The ones I want to talk about briefly today are competence, autonomy, and care and connection.

So what do those mean? Right, so competence is just basically kids like to feel like they know what they're doing. So going back to that grape example, if you give them four grapes when they ask for five, they feel really competent. And also, you get to see that they know a skill, and then it gives you that indication. Okay, we can make this a little more difficult for them, and kids love the challenge. So kind of up the challenge on them when you sense that they're ready for it, and they think that's exciting.

The other thing is, language around that is important. So be careful not to always say "Good job, good job, good job" because it's hard to know what that means. So I really love the response of, "You did it! Oh my gosh, you figured that out! You noticed that." So just being really specific—“Oh, I saw that you put five blocks all together in a pile! Wow! How did you put that together?”

So rather than just saying "Good job," use it as a chance to elicit more conversation but also let them know that you observed that they did something that was kind of cool. Getting back to those other ideas: autonomy is just giving them choices.

I don't know if you've ever heard a pre-K teacher do this or if you've received the advice where you always run the risk of asking when you just don't give a child a choice. You say something like, "Do you want to sit down and color a picture or color a picture with me?" You run the risk of them saying "Nope!" So kids love to have choice; it makes them feel a little bit more independent and gives them some agency.

So offer a couple of things to them. If you know you're going to be on the phone for a few minutes, you can say, "Here are three things that you can do. What do you want to start with? Do you want to start with the puzzle, or the blocks, or the coloring?” and let them just pick the thing, and then say, "When you're done, you can move to the next thing that you want to do." But that way, you're giving them some specific things to do, so you're still putting boundaries around it, but they get to choose.

Finally, the care and connection piece is really, really important. It's super hard right now, because sometimes you're trying to listen to a phone call and you've got your little one going, "Mommy, mommy, mommy!" and it feels like it's a lot sometimes to handle all of that at once. So it's important to maybe set aside time to make those points of connection with your child.

One of my favorite things to recommend and to do is to have a moment either at bedtime, at bath time, or even first thing in the morning where you ask them a few questions just to tap into their day. Our favorite thing at our house is to do what we call "rose, thorn, and bud." With the rose, you ask them something great that happened that day that made them feel beautiful. A thorn is maybe something that was ouchy that they didn't like very much, and a bud is something that they're looking forward to. Some days we just do a bud! My kids say, "Oh, I'm really looking forward to this thing!" Sometimes we just do an ouchie because we end up talking about it for a while.

It's important to make sure that your kids feel like all of these things are okay and that you're hearing them. You may not want— you don't want to offer suggestions for how to fix it necessarily. You just want them to have a chance to tell you what's going on and kind of get stuff off their chest. Little kids need to vent too, so you're their most comfortable person to vent to, so that's important! Because then they know that they can come to you when they need it, but it's okay for them to go a little further during the day and be independent on their own. It helps that safety factor! So these are important.

Okay, another part is that maintaining routines is really important for young children. Why is that, and how do you recommend that parents do that at home?

Yeah, good question! It can feel really daunting, and I want to encourage parents that you don’t feel like you have to write up a separate lesson plan for your child on top of your own plans every day. But at the same time, routines are important. They help create a sense of safety for kids. It helps them know that they're going to be fed at a certain time, and there's comfort in that. They know they're being taken care of and looked after.

It also helps them know what your expectations are of them. So if they know that after dinner, their job is to always help clean up the dishes, there’s comfort in that. They know that that’s something that they’re supposed to do, and it helps lower their anxiety levels, which ultimately helps with things like meltdowns because they are aware of what's coming up and what their expectations are.

One thing I want to encourage you to do is to make your routine work for you. In the evening, before you go to sleep or first thing in the morning when you get up, take a look at your own schedule. Figure out when there are times when you can maybe work with your child on something and where are the times when you really do need to have alone time. You're going to have to maybe put some things out for your child to work on their own and give them those directions. It's perfectly fine as well to prompt them!

Give them something and say, "Hey, I want you to build, and when I come back, I want you to tell me about what you built." So that's a nice way to get it—or maybe not, "I want you to build," but "Here's some blocks. Do you want to build?" And then let them go with it! Again, you want it to be their idea, but making sure you go back and make that touchpoint when you connect with them again and always come back with a smile to let them know you're happy to be there with them. Not add a lot to them, but just let them be with them.

One thing that we've been talking to Caroline about a little bit is how to set up a schedule for your child. I know that's something, Caroline, that is really exciting right now on the Khan Academy Kids programming.

Yeah! We just launched weekly planners for ages two through seven. It's just a template, a starting point for families. We worked with Renee, and one of the most valuable parts of it, I think, are just all the tips in there and ideas for how to fill the time for early literacy, math, and social-emotional development. It's not that you have to stick rigidly to the planner, but it's just, you know, a place where parents can start with a routine and structure. Most importantly, be creative in how you're thinking. Remember that you may be using math or language or literacy in places that you might not identify. So think through what's happening in your day and just identify that you can write that on the planner as, "That's our list! We did it during teeth brushing this morning!" And then you don't have to feel like that's another check on your list. You can make that anything you want!

Exactly! Great! So should we shift now to some of the questions from the audience? I think Dan from our team is going to be joining us.

Yep, thank you, Caroline! Before we get started with the live Q&A period, there are a couple of announcements that I'd like to make. So first, as Caroline mentioned at the start of this, this entire webinar is being recorded. So don't worry if you missed anything or if you joined late; the recording will be made available. We'll be posting it after this session.

And then also excitingly, as Caroline mentioned, we did create the weekly planners, and we've actually attached those as part of this webinar as well. So in our downloadable sections, please go there. There are two things that we want to share with you: the weekly planners for kids ages two to seven and also a one-cheater quick tip sheet of some of the topics that Renee and Caroline spoke to just now.

Finally, before we get started with the live questions and answers, please start putting your questions in the question box. We have a team of moderators who are kind of servicing up for me. I do my best job to get through as many of them as possible with Renee and Caroline.

Okay, shall we get started?

Yeah, that's great! So Caroline, perhaps this one's a good place to start with you. We have a great question from Laura. Laura asks: when so much of the interaction with school is through an iPad, how can I help my child transition on and off so that she can more easily engage in the actual physical world?

Yes, I completely understand that. I mean, I think maybe a starting point is what Renee was talking about with the schedules. It's understanding, you know, what’s coming from her school and what’s the schedule that they are proposing, how much of that is on an iPad, and then maybe you have some other time—a P.E. or something—where it’s not on the iPad. Or maybe the teacher is actually leading you through things there.

But something visual is often helpful for children so that they can kind of see, "Okay, I’m here right now. The next block, I’m gonna be doing something else! I have to go find a book or I have to go find something else in my house." I think maybe giving them a little advanced warning too is important. You know, “You’re about to transition into the next period.”

At Khan Kids, we also have some complementary offline activities so that they can use printables that reinforce the learning that’s in the app too! So that gets them off the screen.

Those are great ideas! Can I add one thing quickly? Just that often in preschools and kindergarten classrooms, teachers will use music during transition times. You might love—you could play it for a minute while it's time to put one thing away and take the next thing out. Sometimes that helps kids know because it goes along with the schedule and signals, “Oh, we’re gonna change! We’re gonna shift gears here! Let’s look at our schedule and see what’s coming up next!”

Great! Thank you! We have a question from Ruth. The question is: “I have a young kindergartner and a three-year-old.” Ruth worries that when the kindergartner is potentially falling behind with social skills, given the distance learning and our shelter-in-place rules. She also worries about potential attachment issues once the kids have to go back to school.

Renee, perhaps this is a good one for you to kind of address. How do we deal with attachment issues and the lack of social interactions or the limited interactions that we have?

Right! And I think that’s definitely a great question! It’s something that even the education community is trying to think a lot about, and this is actually one area where I might recommend that you try to embrace technology a little bit more. Even to get your kids maybe communicating with family members or if they have friends that they might be able to communicate with the help of another parent.

The parents can be there with you, but just to give them that sense of being able to play. I’ve seen kids play games over Facebook or a Zoom-type situation, and they can play all sorts of games, or they can do jumping jacks together. It really can help kids know that they’re interacting and using some language back and forth.

Admittedly, it’s not the same as if they’re playing necessarily next to each other, but it is helpful. Another thing I love is it's a great time to do some reflecting with your child. There are some really wonderful books about social-emotional learning, and so it might be a good time, especially in kindergarten, to reflect back on experiences that they’ve had before that align with what they’re reading in the book. So you can say, “Oh, have you ever felt like this at a time? At a certain time?” And then you can actually share your own experience as well!

So it’s definitely a challenge, but I encourage you to continue to be creative and let your little ones help each other out if they can, if they’re able to do that too.

Great! So the next one is quite a tough one. I’ll let you both answer this one, but Caroline, this is probably good for you: and this is one that we hear a lot and I’m sure this resonates with a lot of our audience. So, Cindy asks, “I’m on day four of school and I’m already getting, ‘I don’t want to do school.’ What is a good way to help them, you know, get their kids excited to start the day?”

Yeah, that is a tough one! Especially on day four! I might start with asking your child why they’re feeling that way today, and it could be a whole host of things. It could be that they don’t like sitting here in front of the computer for so long; it could be, “I don’t know who’s in my class.” So I think depending on that answer, it may trigger some ideas for you!

You know, for example, if it is the screen, like maybe there’s a conversation that you could have with the teacher to see if there are parts where he or she does not need to be logged in, and maybe she can do something else offline? Or—yeah, I think it’s understanding why. I don’t know, Renee, if you have other things to add on this one?

That is a tough one! That’s a great place to start. It’s really understandable that little ones might need to move around a little bit more than they are. I would also recommend that you contact the teacher and explain that that’s happening—not necessarily as a complaint, but it’s a nice way for a teacher to gauge how things are going. Our teachers are working really hard to develop classes that the kids will be interested in, but this is their first time doing it as well. When you give them feedback, it lets them know how to adjust and change for your child.

My other thought is, if it’s allowed, maybe let your child bring a lovey to class, or something that makes them feel comfortable. Depending on the age of the child, and if that’s okay with the teacher, that might be a way to help with that as well! Or perhaps you could sit with them for some of the class time. Maybe—not, you know, not all of it—but some of it, just until they transition and start to feel better.

But I agree, Caroline! I think you have the right approach in terms of just trying to figure out what it might be that’s creating that pushback.

Well, I’d like to say there’s another—there’s an easier question, but the next one is quite challenging as well, and I think a lot of parents have this on their mind. Vivienne says one thing that she’s struggling with is that both parents are working full-time, they’ve got meetings on Zoom at the same time, and so the gist of the question is: how should they think about child screen time for their child, especially when they are on Zoom calls two to three hours a day? What’s the best way to think about it and the best way to control the amount of screen time that they’re exposing?

Yeah, I think, you know, we’re very cognizant of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the WHO guidelines around screen time and have designed our app to fit within those constraints on recommendations. But I’d also say, especially during this time when we’re all, you know, really challenged and stressed, give yourself, you know, some forgiveness and grace in this area.

And I may not look so much at the screen time—I mean, you’re talking about two to three hours a day, so it’s not like excessive—but look at the quality of the screen time. What is the screen time bringing to your child? And how is your child engaging in that time?

There’s a huge array of options, obviously, and from very passive experiences where the child can just get glazed over, and also things that are not developmentally appropriate where you’re just going to be overstimulated or not learning. But if they’re using screen time in a constructive way—so if it’s a Zoom call with their teacher and their teacher is having them sing or dance or do activities and they’re also getting some social interaction with their peers, that’s very active screen time!

Or if they’re learning, you know, particular skills on a program that’s been designed by educators and has learning goals at the forefront, and it’s really about active minds on learning—which you’ll be able to see as you observe your child learning from the screen time. Those are healthy ways to be engaging in screen time, and I think you know very good options for when you cannot be in front of your child 100% of the time!

But it does sound like you are trying to curb the time, and I’d say, you know, also extending—if your child’s really interested in a certain app or something like that, maybe asking them to take it offline and draw and tell a story about that character or something like that. I don’t know if you wanted to jump in...

Yeah! I think I would—one thing, this may be something parents are already doing or aware of, but do try and have your kiddo be somewhat near you when they’re on screen time. So give them some headphones so it’s not disruptive to what you’re doing. But if it’s possible—again, I recognize sometimes it’s not possible, and that’s okay—but that way you can kind of keep an eye on just what they’re doing.

Especially in the case that you have a kiddo who maybe can switch screens or switch apps without you realizing it! And then yes, exactly—like Caroline said—you always want to have something ready for your kiddo to go. If they want to transition off screens, or you want to try and encourage them to transition off the screen, so having something out—a puzzle that’s partway started, a Lego activity that’s partway started—a paint, like the paint’s ready to go, so they can just get going on it.

That kind of thing! At least that way, when they look up, there’s something else that they can go to immediately and might be interesting to them. That’s a tough one for sure!

So I think we have time for one more question, and Renee, perhaps you could start with this one, and Caroline, if you have anything to add. Hillary asks, “My five-year-old doesn’t choose the choices I give her. She says no and that she wants something else even if I tell her she can’t have something else. Any inspiring ideas that you have there?”

Right, so this might be a good time to ask your child ahead of time, “What are some choices that you would like to have?” So without making the—without promising that she’ll get to have them, say, “You know, hey, I wanted some new ideas for choices that you might like to do or like to play with.” That might help just come up with new ideas.

The other thing to keep in mind and be aware of is it could be that she wants something else entirely, like to spend time with you. And so that might require a little bit more of a conversation and just checking in maybe a few extra times during the day. So letting her know when you’re going to check in with her, making sure to honor that time so she knows when it’s coming.

So you might say, “These are your choices for now. I will be back in 15 minutes, and I want to hear all about what you’ve been working on!” or “Then we can read a story,” or “Then we can watch a show together.” Whatever is something that she feels comfortable doing with you.

It could be more that she wants that time! I have to say, my preteen who’s 11 right now has suddenly become really demanding about breakfast every day, which she’s been making herself breakfast for a really long time. I really think it’s her touchpoint for me. She wants to get up, and she wants to be able to be near me while she’s eating breakfast. So even our older kids, I think are looking for that! So keep that in mind that maybe something is happening with your little one as well!

Cool! Any other advice, Caroline?

No, I just had a quick thought of building on Renee’s idea of having the child come up with a few choices. Maybe you put them all into a box, and then next time you could pick one, and maybe that element of surprise would add some intrigue to the option.

That’s a great idea! That’s a great idea! And similarly, sometimes you can rotate a bucket of a few toy choices in and out, so today these are your toy choices, but tomorrow we’ll have these toy choices. Kind of put the other ones away so she can’t see them or access them, so it’s constantly changing up, and it looks a little bit different all the time.

Right! Well, unfortunately, that’s about all the time we have for the questions! Caroline, I want to thank you and Renee for sharing your expertise with our audience and as you can see, thank you, the audience, for submitting such great questions and taking the time out of your busy schedules to be with us. We really appreciate that!

As I mentioned before, if you missed anything, don’t worry! We’ve recorded this entire session, and we will be posting that available online shortly after this webinar. In fact, when you register, you'll automatically be getting this email with the links to the recording.

And then if you need more resources or you want to learn more, you can always go to khankids.org, which is our website for Khan Academy Kids, and there’s a blue banner at the top that links to our distance learning resources as well. We update those things all the time, so please come by and check back often!

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