latest-news Making Online Learning Exciting In Matrix International Early Years Posted August 3, 2021August 3, 2021 Mindy Leong Making Online Learning Exciting In Matrix International Early Years August 9, 2021 Learning online for young children has always been a challenge. However at Matrix International Early Years, the teachers have planned amazing online classroom lessons for our children in the early years. To help our children focus on their learning, we have a PowerPoint visual of what we want our children and parents to do. They watch, they see and then they do. We also encourage our children to talk by giving daily challenges and tasks. We invite them to find a specific topic or task and send us a picture of the task they are going to perform or the topic that they want to talk about. Children then get their opportunity individually to do the task or talk about their favourite topics such as dinosaurs, favourite food or exciting games. To help spice up their online lessons, we incorporate the use of puppets, songs, dressing up according to themes, picnics and tea parties, bicycle day, funny hair day and everything else that helps to keep our children excited about their learning. We have been very fortunate that our parents have been very sporting and supportive of our lesson plans. In all that we have done, we have always ensured that our children still keep to the classroom routine that they are familiar with. For their emotional wellbeing, we allow them to chat before and after the lesson to keep up their classroom camadarie and get their collegial support from each other. We keep our online teaching schedule simple and share our lesson plans in advance with the parents to ensure a smooth delivery online. Online teaching is unique and is a new learning challenge for both our teachers and children but the goal to ensure young children learn has not changed nor will it be changed even with this pandemic. There must be interest and enjoyment before learning can take place. What we as educators do is to continue doing online what we have always done onsite which is to inculcate learning through structured play and incorporate activities like singing, dancing, reading, numeracy, drama and art/craft in order to always challenge the children and get them excited to learn! SHARE