Corona for kids: go on a bear hunt!
In the region where I live, in West Flanders, they show up massively in the streets: stuffed bears in front of the window. They are a response to a call to make walks for children, in their own neighbourhood, a little more attractive.
These are strange times, even for our youngest.
Anyone who follows me a little knows I'm in education.
Now that lessons have been suspended for a week and a half and there is a lockdown light in Belgium, we are sitting at home.
Students and larger children receive online lessons, but with younger children this is quite difficult to realize.
How do you manage that, at home, when you as a parent also have to work from home on that one family computer, but also big brother and sister have to do their assignments online? Then it may not be feasible for the youngest.
They can barely type their work.
I'm happy when they write decent sentences.
So I give them a writing assignment every now and then, for which they get a whole week.
They email them and I answer them.
This week's writing assignment was, “Tell me in a few sentences what things you did last week that you would never do in a normal week.”
The first e-mails are in the meantime.
And so sometimes an 'email' conversation with my students arises.
What I hear most is that they feel trapped.
One wrote literally: “I feel locked up in my own home and garden, because I'm not allowed to go to a playground or play with a boyfriend.”
And let that bear hunt be a solution for that.
Because we can (for the time being) still outside, even if it needs to be without a car, in our own area.
But a walk through the village, just on the street, is not the favourite time for children.
Knuffels te koop
wij doen ook mee
het is de bedoeling
dat de kleintjes lang komen
met de ouders, zodat ze zin hebben
om te wandelen, de regels moeten gevolgd worden