How Parents Can Keep Kids Busy (and Learning) in Quarantine

Yesterday evening, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that, due to concerns about the spread of the novel coronavirus, New York City’s 1,800 public schools would be closed for more than a month starting today. And in the next breath, he made an announcement that put many a parent in New York City—where many workplaces have already closed or gone fully remote—into a real pickle: Remote learning for public-school kids would commence Monday, March 23, a full week after the closure of school facilities. In other words, more than 1 million New York City K–12 students are now on a surprise week-long break, and they’ll be spending every day of it cooped up at home with their parents.

New York City’s schools are among thousands of schools and child-care facilities across the United States that will be closed this week: As of, it takes only a matter of weeks away from school for students to fall disastrously behind schedule on their learning. And realistically, it takes probably only a matter of hours away from school for them to affect their parents’ productivity. So in places all over the country where remote learning will be difficult, impossible, or delayed, parents face a formidable challenge: how to keep their kids from bouncing off the walls or melting into blobs in front of glowing screens, while avoiding backslide and learning loss.