Caroline Pringle, Families and Professionals Advisor (Child Enquiries)
Well, we are in another lockdown; some of your children may be attending school but this is possibly part time, and for some children schools are closed until 8 March (at date of writing). You are again faced with the prospect of helping your children keep on top of their education and this may be on-line, which has its own challenges! You will also want to balance this with keeping them healthy and fit and not stuck indoors. Perhaps you are endeavouring to work from home too.
During the last lockdown I put together some information that you might want to revisit, on supporting children with Fragile X during lockdown, and using visual aids.
However, I thought it might be worth adding a few more activities/resources to help you home school and keep your children motivated. I’ve been made aware of the following:
· CBBC are broadcasting a free, three-hour block of primary school programmes that start at 9am each weekday.
· BBC Two are running at least two hours' worth of educational programmes for secondary students every weekday.
· Twinkl – who provide educational resources – has made 630,000 home learning packs available to parents for free to help parents plan their child’s day and make sure they keep up with school studies. This is from Early Years up to GCSE stage and includes special education needs resources.
· Scholastic, a well-known publisher of educational books, has put together a range of free home learning packs to help parents and teachers keep their children up to date with their schooling and development. The packs are divided by learning age – Early Years, Key Stage 1, Lower Key Stage 2 and Upper Key Stage 2 – and can be downloaded from Scholastic’s Home Learning site.
· Joe Wicks is back again!!! He is hosting free workouts aimed at children, these workouts are live on his YouTube channel. Starting at 9 am on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays – if you miss it you can still catch up on YouTube.
· Sesame Street has teamed up with Headspace to create “Monster Meditations” – to help children with their emotions. These videos are about 3 minutes long and are available on YouTube and YouTube Kids. The videos show Sesame Street Muppets feeling frustrated, impatient, overwhelmed, nervous, disappointed, and excited. Each monster learns mindfulness skills to help them cope. This link will take you to the first in the series showing Cookie Monster waiting for his cookies to bake.
I trust the above information has been of help; it may be that you have some good links you would like to share with other parents. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with information to share and/or if I can help you further caroline@fragilex.org.uk.
Thank you to www.wired.co.uk for some of the above information.