From health emergency decree by influenza A, the winter school break lasted about a month. What to do with the kids at home? That is the question most often heard from the mouths of parents who already know that for a month will have their children not attend school.
The first task for adult children is to explain that “these days are not holidays” but a time to stay home in order to take the necessary precautions to prevent the spread of swine flu (more correctly, A-H1N1 ) and requires the collaboration of all. This position implies that schools take the responsibility to raise their students work. Clearly there are also conform to these social realities and the economic situation that crosses to the institutions. When students schedule tasks, one of the issues to bear in mind is that the goal of the task is none other than review what was learned. This means back on what they learned, with various activities to complement what has been taught.
Thus, no new issues to arise. From this, the pedagogical role must maintain at home and the adult will be responsible for enforcing this care. To a greater or lesser degree, according to the ages of the children, the presence of an adult to follow how they work is necessary. Continue beyond some homework, the announcement to suspend classes with the recommendation to avoid the crush of people-like shows, supermarkets or parties, puts parents in front of a scenario which will have the opportunity to develop ingenuity to get the game, communication and creativity. Recreating a free time differently for boys during the school break forced by the influenza pandemic will be the challenge for many parents.
In principle it is advisable to keep a routine schedule orderly, not adjusted to the rhythm of school, but keep children organized. It can be more flexible without giving guidelines to set the times to perform the tasks, to watch television, to surf the Internet or to perform other daily activities that are proposed as games, reading books, among others. It is also important to bear in mind that we should not fear the boredom and fill them with tasks: the gaps can be interesting times for kids to develop their own ideas, spark the imagination and creativity.
Building toys, traditional games retrieve and organize recreational pathways integrating the grandparents are some of the ideas that can be covered for a different leisure. As a suggestion you can make a list of all the games they know the children, parents and grandparents, as a trigger to begin to stop thinking about what to do and not do what we can. This requires a playful attitude of the adult. It is very important to give instructions and open the range of possibilities.
For young ones, should perhaps consider the house as a workshop and make every day of the week for building games and toys (tops, bearings, board games, costumes, masks or puppets), or modeling clay, or paint, in what might be called the workshop of plastic using different materials: mass, cardboard, cans, scraps. Whereas for larger ones there are options beyond the video game or social networking so appealing to teenagers as do together a list of movies to watch or read comics or search the Internet for the “cooperative games” or “games in the world” and encouraged to visit other challenges.
Have on hand some activities which proposes the use of written and spoken word, can afford to deal with joint projects: creating a family album with anecdotes and comments, write notes and where to express how they imagine in the future, for example, within 10 years, put together homemade books with paper, pencils and cardboard for the cover. This work stimulates the imagination, help to reinforce the reading habit in children and encourages communication in the family.
This delay may be the time to order drawers, nooks and relocate toys, but with creative attitude. The computer and television can also be allies if we are creative in finding pages of puzzles, riddles and games software and programs of interest to kids. Spice up dolls, scrap books and magazines and search for new places for them can be an activity for all ages. This time, the real challenge for parents to accept more noise will pass and disorder at home.
Many have assumed that this year will not be like others and developed different strategies to address the situation, as organized in parallel so that a person is attentive to the needs of the children of the same building or neighborhood.