Search
Close this search box.

Lockdown Week of 18-24, May 2020

Dear Friends,

Greetings and wishing you all good health from this 9th week of lockdown. It is hard to believe that over two months have passed since the UK enacted these safety measures. I’d still love to hear your stories and how you’re getting on, please get in touch!

 

COVID-19

As before, our list of Covid related resources grows! We’ve added a link to a nice information resource from the University of Southampton called Germ Defence – available in 17 languages.

We are also aware that there are a few gaps. A friend of ours is drawing and writing a beautiful picture book aimed at children aged 5-8 years. The storybooks on our list (so far) meet the needs of very young children and those 8+ so this book for those in between, which will be really useful. We are helping with this project by developing questions that can be included in the book. Questions that this age group are asking and ideas for follow up questions that parents can ask when reading this book with young children. Have you had this experience? If so, what questions are children asking?

 

NEW! FREE! Eye Health and Vision Resource Book

It’s been a very long time a’coming and we hope that we have produced something interesting and useful. Instead of doing a detailed paragraph on the book here, if you are interested click this link which will take you to our blog where I have set out the contents page and a link to the book too.

 

Emma H and Her Music House for Children

Our dear friend, Emma, has created online music lessons for families in lockdown with babies and young children. This week, she has sent us three songs and videos that can be used by older children when they are playing with younger ones. Have a look at her website where you can buy her fabulous books too!

 

WhatsApp Marvels

It feels marvellous to be communicating directly using WhatsApp with the headteacher, two teachers and two others who helped with our work in Mozambique in February. We are still assembling news of everyone and especially the children who are out of school and in lockdown and we hope to have news to share next week. I’m using Google Translate to translate my messages to friends there into Portuguese and it’s working pretty well!

 

SuperBetter!

What a great week to have a long and lively discussion with the CEO of SuperBetter – an organisation built around the development and distribution of a popular and effective well-being app called, SuperBetter. We love the way that much of this content is evidence-based. This the brainchild of Jane McGonigal who has presented a few outstanding TED lectures such as this one. We are working to adapt some of the content on this app in a new wellbeing curriculum for schools in low resource settings. If you are interested in finding out more – get in touch!

 

This week, on the blog…

  1. Tips for Distance Learning from the Institute of Social and Emotional Learning, Bristol
  2. Dance, muscular bonding and how this relates to quality learning
  3. A bit more on the storybook, My Hero is You, a book produced by multiple agencies to help children understand the Covid-19
  4. Games to promote Child Protection
  5. We love learning about pedagogy and this week we have published something linked to the work of the Education Endowment Foundation on Feedback | Collaborative learning and Peer Tutoring
  6. Our LifeSkills activity of the week is a session on the ‘Three Cs’ of Decision Making

 

Become One of Our 100 Supporters

If you love and use our work, please join our 100 supporters group! 100 is our ‘goal’, if 100 people donate a modest amount every month, we would be able to make it through this year despite all our usual funding streams drying up. If you like and trust our work and want us to carry on, donate now (UK taxpayers can also add gift aid).

Keep safe!


Clare