11 Ways To Stay In Touch With Classmates
For us, the most challenging part of this social distancing, by far, has been trying to explain to Maddie why she can’t play with her friends. It breaks my heart to see her so sad to be without her classmates and buddies- to have her wonder why she can’t go to the playground or have a play date. Over the last few days we’ve worked hard to keep her interacting with them in safe and healthy ways.
Here are a few ways the kiddos can keep in tough with their classmates:
Virtual playdates
Make a Zoom Call and facilitate a Show and Tell share
Start a Class Book Club-Choose a book at the beginning of the week and FaceTime or Zoom to talk about it
Record a short message and send to your friends
Write letters to classmates and drop in their mailbox
Make friendship bracelets and send a picture of them or drop at their house
Chopped- FaceTime or Zoom and let kids create their own recipes from the same ingredients
Virtual Dance Party it Freeze Dance
Plant a Class Garden at Home- Assign each student a flower or vegetable and plant at home.
Choose a song to learn as a class, then set up a call to perform together
Create a Story as a Class- Set up a call and have students start alphabetically. Take turns adding on to the story. You can also do this by recording sections of the story then sending via text or email, then have one parent or teacher compile all the videos
Write letters or draw pictures for your local nursing home- share yours with your classmates then have one gather them and drop off.
photo by Julia Dags
Earlier this week Maddie and I sat down and came up with some ideas for our summer. She’s enrolled in a few camps here and there, but for the most part we don’t have many plans and I’m really looking forward to some quality time together, just us two.
Always one to level up the fun, Maddie suggested we put all of our ideas in a “Summer Bucket List Jar,” and on unscheduled days we will draw from it and let fate decide what we do… Genius!