Parents Say Their School's Reopen Plan Will Make Working from Home Harder — Here's How to Manage Everything
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It's no secret school is going to look a lot different this year. In fact, it's all most parents can talk about. Should you send your child back to the classroom? Should you do 100 percent remote learning from home? Should you do a mix of both? We can confidently say there is no single right answer to these questions — and we can also say things are about to get a lot harder.
The Cozi Family Organizer app recently conducted a study of its active users and found what we suspected to be true. When asked, "How will your school's reopen plan affect your ability to manage work, school, household chores, and other logistics of family life?" a whopping 60 percent of parents answered, "It will make it harder to manage." While this is not exactly a surprise, it is still a little daunting.
So, what can we do? Parents are struggling through uncharted waters with their children, jobs, personal lives, and daily household responsibilities, and it's pretty evident that they (we!) need help. It turns out the same proprietor of the study mentioned above may just be the help we all need.
The free Cozi Family Organizer app has been providing support to families navigating their daily lives and responsibilities for years and uses a shared, color-coded calendar so that everyone can see what's going on, all in one place. Families love the Cozi app not only for the calendar but for its grocery and shopping lists, chore tracker, meal planner, and family journal features. This year, the app has stepped up to the plate to help parents manage blended learning during school closures amid the novel coronavirus pandemic with new resources.
The new features include a 2020 Back to School Planner, list of tax-free shopping days, school supplies lists, chore and cleaning checklists, and the abilities to add Zoom links to calendar events and import your child's school and classroom calendar. Parents have already reported seeing an improvement in their daily lives since they are able to assign tasks to any family member on the shared calendar and track them. "We started doing 'morning chores' with our kids," reported one user. "After breakfast but before anything else, they have to brush teeth and hair, clear breakfast dishes, empty the dishwasher, make beds, and bring the dirty laundry to the laundry room. Just starting the day that way has made things more manageable."
Another user raved about how much the app has been teaching her children and also credited the app with creating "better family communication on a more regular basis."
Imagine being able to manage everything in one place? Well, now you can. The free app is available on Apple and Google Play, and we're not the only ones who think it's definitely worth downloading. On both app services combined, Cozi has hundreds of thousands of glowing reviews, boasting near-perfect ratings of 4.8 and 4.4 out of five stars, respectively.
