A Survival Guide For Parents: Introducing Podcasts Into Homeschooling
It’s not always easy, but learning from podcasts as a family is worth experimenting with.
“Teachers don’t get paid enough,” is a phrase I imagine millions of parents have uttered out loud at some point this month.
Stepping into the role of teacher is hard on a good day, and all the more difficult with a pandemic going on. There are countless permutations on what the new normal of home life looks like, none of which make it easy to prioritize education.
Our family situation is that I am navigating working from home, my wife is doing home visits part-time as an RN, and we have a four-year-old daughter in preschool and a six-year-old son in Kindergarten. Like most other parents, we had initial anxiety about what was going to happen with schools and our kids’ education. After it became clear that we were in this for the long haul, our ambitions grew around our homeschooling regiment. We’ll create a schedule! They’ll still learn everything! We got this!
This ambition is hilarious in hindsight. The reality of how difficult it is to juggle working from home while also providing formal educational structure hit us immediately. We knew we had to abandon the idea of trying to emulate school and to instead simply try our best to keep their minds growing and curiosity satisfied.
This is where podcasts come in. I love podcasts, my wife loves podcasts, and both of our kids love learning. On paper, podcasts are perfect for homeschooling, with bite-sized lessons, minimal screen time, and a robust selection of family-friendly content.
Not so fast. It turns out podcasts don’t hold the attention of young kids, no matter how much you hype it up to them. As much as I love Wow in the World, Mindy Thomas and Guy Raz are no match for Anna and Elsa for a guaranteed peaceful house.
We didn’t want to give up so easily though, so over the past few weeks we have experimented with what actually works in helping young minds engage with educational audio while stuck at home. Podcasts are perfect as the centerpiece of a learning experience for kids. It just takes a little planning and patience.
What follows are some of the strategies we’ve stumbled upon in our persistence to make audio work as a component of an at-home education for younger students.
HOW TO INCORPORATE PODCASTS INTO HOMESCHOOLING
Experiment with best times of day and days of the week.
You would think that being stuck at home would allow for consistent schedules, but that has been far from reality. When imagining our ambitious homeschool curriculum, I had this notion of having a big chunk set aside for “podcast listening” where it could be an hour long block at the same time every day. If this situation has taught me anything, it’s that in order to implement a true structured school week at home, you have to be able to do it full time without interruptions and without major other things pulling at your attention. There isn’t anything to pull at our attention right now though, right?
What we have settled on is a fluid schedule. Sometimes we listen to a few episodes a day and sometimes we go several days where it doesn’t work out. Sometimes we listen during breakfast and sometimes it’s after dinner.
Also, we have gotten in the habit of promoting certain activities only during school hours. For better or worse, making our kids practice writing just feels a little wrong to do late at night or on a weekend. Podcasts have been different though, with a large amount of our listening happening in odd hours or on weekends when we can be more fully engaged. The more podcasts can be stealthily educational and not feel like “school,” the better.
Try to view podcasts with your kids as a lifelong habit, not as homework to get through. Just as kids pick up our reading habits, we can help them have a good early experience with audio.
Put podcasts on the TV.
I know one of the biggest benefits for podcasts in this situation is that they don’t require more screen time, but stay with me on this one. Not to compare my children to moths, but something about having the bright light and visible time bar has had an incredible effect around focusing attention. The audio comes through louder and clearer, which also helps bring down the chaos.
Some smart TVs have podcast apps that you can download, but the best option is to see if you can cast your audio directly from your phone to your TV. I don’t usually listen to podcasts via Spotify, but they have the easiest ability for both listening directly with a smart TV app, or casting it from your phone.
Talk before, during, and after the podcast.
This doesn’t have to be a formal process with lots of pre-thought out questions. The episode itself sometimes works as an amazing springboard into other conversations. My favorite thing is when our kids ask real questions about how the world works and are invested in the answer. Some of the best conversations I’ve had with them over the past few weeks has been because a podcast was the initial spark, even if the topic wasn’t ultimately what the episode was about.
If you want a little bit of structure, we’ve found that following the tried and true advice for delivering a speech works pretty well here: tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. Let your kids know what the episode will cover and how long it will be ahead of time. Get them engaged before you hit play and pause it several times throughout to check-in with their understanding. Afterwards, see if they can summarize what they learned, even if it’s one single thing. They might even restore some sense of normalcy to your life by telling you “nothing.”
This was an actual conversation I’ve had with both kids at some point:
“What did you learn today?” “Nothing.” “Nothing? You literally stared at the wall and learned nothing?” “Yes”.
Listen while doing something else.
Podcasts were made for multitasking. I almost never listen to podcasts as a solo activity, and I soon realized it was silly to expect our kids to do the same. Having something else to preoccupy their hands is ideal, so they are less likely to move around the house and disengage. Some kind of simple craft or anything else artistic works great for this.
My son was recently playing with a game that involved circuits, which made it an easy sell to put on an episode of But Why about electricity.
Good ol’ bribery.
“Whoever can tell me what this episode is about at the end will get a prize.” That certainly focused some attention around our house.
Teachers are experts at simple incentives, and this is something we should absolutely steal from them. If you want to truly channel your inner teacher, you can use sticker charts to mark off podcast related excellence and give some kind of major reward when they get to the top. A good one might be to allow them to call in a question to their favorite show.
Flip the classroom.
Sometimes even with every trick in the book, it’s hard to get attentive pupils at home. One option is to ask what they want to learn and to let them choose a podcast for you to listen to instead. The challenge then is for you to teach the takeaways in a minute or so and try to get a discussion going. They will probably get a kick out of seeing you attempt your best teacher impression.
Think of it as a nod to all the teachers who scramble the night before a brand new lesson plan is rolled out.
Search by topics.
Don’t forget about your search bar in your podcast app. I never use Apple Podcasts to listen, but I regularly still pull it out for its excellent episode search feature. Ask your kids what topic they want to learn about, type it in, and then let them choose any of the family-friendly short episodes that populate.
There is something about allowing them to pick it directly in the app that engages them more than normal.
FAMILY FRIENDLY PODCAST RECOMMENDATIONS
If podcasts are new to your family, I want to highlight some great family friendly podcasts. The good news is that podcasts for kids is a booming genre right now, and has been steadily adding excellent content for several years. Like the bigger world of all podcasts, difficulty with discovery is only a function of knowing where to look, not a reflection on the quality of what’s out there.
A few of our favorite shows:
Wow in the World. High energy adventures from Mindy Thomas and Guy Raz across time and space on a wide variety of topics. Start with: Betelgeuse and the new super-short quiz series called Two What’s?! And A Wow!
The Music Box. Short music education show that gets right to the point and offers interactive lessons on fundamentals like rhythm and beat. Start with: Pitch It!
Circle Round. Engaging short stories with great voice acting that are perfect for discussions around morals and life-lessons. Start with: The Enchanted Paintbrush.
Radiolab for Kids. A new feed of the best Radiolab clips and episodes that are family friendly and geared towards wonder. Start with: Goo And You.
But Why: Kids ask the questions and the show provides engaging answers. Start with: What Is Electricity?
Tai Asks Why: From the CBC and hosted by an 11 year old who is curious about the world and wise beyond his years. A sure way to get your kids to say, “Hey wait a minute, where is MY podcast?” Start with: What are animals saying to each other?
Looking for more?
A hat tip to Ma’ayan Plaut for turning me onto several of these excellent sources for additional family friendly listening.
The Kids Listen Activity Podcast. Kids Listen is a network of kids shows, and this feed collects some of the best episodes and provides an activity to do with each daily selection.
Ping and Echo. Get one family friendly podcast recommendation every weekday, along with activities and additional information. This is fantastic.
TRAX. A network of original podcasts geared towards older kids between the ages of 9–13. This will get you on a mailing list for weekly recommendations. From the fine folks over at PRX.
Pinna. The original “Netflix for Podcasts” is actually this great ad-free audio streaming service. Get original kids shows and audiobooks in this safe learning environment. While schools are closed, use PINNA4KIDS promo code to get a 60-day free trial. I wrote more in-depth about Pinna here.
Remember: We’re not teachers
In my struggle to prioritize life appropriately, it has been remarkably easy for formal learning to fall towards the bottom of the list. A strategy that has worked for us is to worry less about the formal part and worry more about the learning part, regardless of its form. We are lucky that our kids are as young as they are, of course.
I’m worried about the dramatic shifts that will happen in the education system when we get to the other side of this, but I hope one positive is that audio comes out as a true partner in any kind of education, formal or not.
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