Lockdown as foster parents has its challenges at times, but it’s also a chance to spend time bonding and making secure relationships with our children and foster child.
We spent time planning how we would make home-schooling work, especially for our three very energetic children.
A timetable which included structured learning, free choice time and outdoor learning was incredibly important. When allowed to venture outdoors we spent many hours in the woods where the children would climb trees, make stick houses as well as collect leaves to make pictures with at home. We would also try to use the children’s interests to help with their learning. On one walk the children were fascinated with the tadpoles in a pond so when returning home we made life cycles of a frog and incorporated written work within this.
The challenges we found were trying to differentiate for children whose ages were between 3-10 years. Having lots of hands on practical activities helped with this such as making volcanoes erupt in the garden where our youngest could also be involved with the practical side and then the eldest children would follow this up with written work afterwards.
At the end of lockdown 1, we found the children to be much more appreciative of nature and a lot more sociable, often choosing to spend time together drawing and being creative instead of sitting on technology.