Resources for children and families

Supporting children and families through unexpected times of rapid and unpredictable change in the light of coronavirus.

The following resources have been collated from a wide range of sources to provide information for anyone to use as they feel would be helpful. They include information relevant to children across the early years and school-age range including those with special educational needs and disabilities.
NB They are not recommendations, purely possibilities.

Information on coronavirus for children

The BBC Newsround site has a comprehensive section on coronavirus with text and video guidance focusing on tips if a child is worried, how to wash your hands, and what self-isolation means.

Covibook – Supporting children and families around the world – Available in 18 different languages.

Hello I’m a virus.

Storybooks for children about the virus.

Carol Gray has produced a social story about coronavirus and pandemics. The social story uses large print pictures and provides contextual information about pandemics and viruses in general.

Information for parents of how to support children through COVID19

Helping children cope with stress during the 2019-nCoV outbreak

Talking to Kids About the Coronavirus

Articles and handouts for parents

Place2Be – Guide to helping parents answer questions from their children and to support family wellbeing

Young Minds - Talking to your child about Coronavirus and 10 tips from their Parents Helpline to support family wellbeing

Covibook – an interactive resource designed to support and reassure children aged 7 and under to help children explain and draw the emotions that they might be experiencing during the pandemic

Mindful and relaxation exercises that parents can do with younger children to help with managing anxiety:

Managing anxiety about the virus as adults:

Mind: Coronavirus and your wellbeing

BBC: Coronavirus, how to protect your mental health

Anxiety UK: Health and other forms of anxiety and coronavirus

Special Education Needs and Disability

National Autistic Society – guidance and helpline for parents’, young people and staff

The Autism Education – A social story about coronavirus that has a good level of specificity about the effects of social distancing e.g. not being able to go to favourite places

CarersUK - Guidance for carers

Amaze - information pack for parents

Information for those struggling with OCD

General information for young people about managing their mental health

Inclusive resources

Story massage has put together a free resource booklet of 36 stories, email them to be sent a copy: mary@storymassage.co.uk

Pete Wells has some raucous free sensory stories available on his website - and the podcast is well worth a listen too!

The Sensory Projects has project packs for inclusive learning and also some simple sensory games to play.

The Sensory Dispensary have activities available to download from TES SEN website.

Home learning packs from Ashfield school

Soundabout is offering live online inclusive music sessions

Inclusive Teach activities

Music apps and interactive resources (even some online lessons)

Clicker - accessible word processing

Interactive computer activities from Bridgend School

Riverside home school resources

31 pages of activity ideas for special school learners

Sensory and messy play activities for children with additional needs

Website and activity ideas

50 sensory learning activities

Positive Eye Ideas Machine

Ways to learn through play

Off nursery / School activities

Top tips with 10 activities that can be done with your children during this period of time off nursery/school: Here are some preparation top tips:

Setting Up a Family Meeting – calling a family meeting is important to set ground rules and expectations for the duration of this situation. Ask all to participate and look into what is their understanding of the situation, what this means and why are we doing this…it will give everyone a sense of purpose and meaning. Validate emotions as children may feel like things are not fair. Write together a poster with ground rules, decide on the ground rules together, like how many hours of devices and games for example, chores, cooking and ask for everyone’s contribution to the family household.
Setting Up a Schedule – Having a calendar or a schedule outlining different activities will help create a routine and establish predictability. It can be done visually using colour coded signs, see picture above. Although not necessarily needing to be equally dispersed across the day, deciding on a schedule together will help family functioning.
Deciding on Different Activities – When discussing different activities, it is important to ensure that all family members’ needs are met. For younger children, they may need play and unstructured times, as for older children, it may mean learning online with structured educational activities set by the school. For parents, it may mean the need to have some time to work and communicate with colleagues. Remember it is also important to allow for self-care and time for you, like putting the oxygen mask on you before someone else! What activities can we do from home? You may think it will be a long haul! Here are some ideas of different educational, cognitive and creative activities that can be done at home.

10 activities for home

Setting Up a Den in the house or a Camp in the garden – This activity can be useful to create a safe place for children and a place they know they can have some quiet time, such as, reading a book, playing with little people, teddies or puppets. You can ask them to contribute to set it up with you, make decorations, put up lights and a sign. Children will find this fun and different. It can create an imaginative world for the child.
Setting Up a Learning Place in the house and Do Learning Together – It is important that children feel they have an allocated space in the house where they can concentrate and focus on learning. It does not have to be a big space and can even be a shared space. It is more about how we use this space and what we do when we are learning. Setting up some ground rules for this will also be helpful. With a schedule, allocate time to learning in short and fruitful bursts, it is more about the quality and the positive experience of learning rather the quantity and speed at which we do these learning tasks. When you are noticing that learning is no longer fruitful, have a short break, a snack, a glass of water, some movement breaks. Family learning can be rich as we can all learn together and share understanding, problem-solving and information.
Cooking Together – Cooking is great as it also includes literacy and numeracy tasks, such as, reading recipes or counting and measuring ingredients. Involving children in cooking can be fun and full of joy as they are involved in producing a tangible product at the end. You can also ask the children to finish off the cookies, cake, etc. by decorating them, lots of time can be spent on this.
Puzzle, Lego, Visual-Spatial Activities – These activities tend to be calming as the brain focuses on putting things together rather than verbal or emotion demanding tasks. Offering these activities in the house will be of benefit to everyone as it will help all involved to be grounded and calm.
Setting Up a Fun Project – It is important to vary activities, like a carousel. Start with one and move on to the next. When activities are designed to promote different areas of development, children will find this more engaging than if it is tapping into the same type of skills so it is important to also have something creative, a fun project you will enjoy doing together. A fun project could be: making a scrapbook of different drawings, paintings, making characters out of modelling clay, picking up leaves from the garden and finding the name of the tree online, taking photographs of wildlife in the garden such as birds, animals, painting rocks with emojis on them, drawing a cartoon strip or writing a collection of short stories, inventing characters and drawing these, so many things that can be done. Some children may like the challenge of a research project.
Starting a Collection, Playing Board Games – Stamps, stones, leaves, labels and lots of other things can start collections. Board games, such as snakes and ladders, can be made using templates on the web.
Sending Messages, Letters and Postcards to Family and Friends – Keep in touch with your social networks via different communication modes either video call or messaging.
Learning a New Skill Together and/or Teaching a New Skill – There are lots of youtube videos nowadays that can teach skills step by step. Learn to say words in a different language, learn how to do sewing, knitting, crochet, slime, scrapbooking, photography, design a webpage together or design cards online.
Implementing Routines for Self-care and Mindfulness – It’s ok for all involved to feel this is not a normal situation. It is important to keep communicating, being transparent, responding to questions, presenting the facts as well as not bombarding with facts. Children are curious and like to find out about the world so it is a good opportunity to open their thinking by sharing information, exploring maps, countries. It is also important we are aware of feelings and able to recognise sensations, feelings and actions. Implement some self-care activities together such as doing a calming activity together, reading a book, relaxing, watching a film.
Exercising – Don’t forget to move and for the full family to move. You can set up some an obstacle course in the garden for example. This can be done using household items like a skipping rope, bottles, a ball. Like do 10 jumps, 10 skips, 10 hoops in the basketball hoop, knock 3 bottles down, etc. You can set up a challenge and time them going through the course. Walking the dog and playing with an animal can also be part of the routine.

Have fun at home!

GoNoodle - videos designed to get kids moving.

Seusville - a lot of activities, crafts and games based on the world of Dr Seuss

Thinking games - this website has links to a whole host of games designed to improve logical thinking skills

Highlights Kids - a popular US magazine for children, this site has lots of ideas for craft activities, recipes and an 'explore' section covering science questions and experiments

Art for Kids Hub - this Youtube channel shows you how to draw a variety of things from animals to cartoon characters and even cars

The Imagination Tree - Creative art and craft activities for the very youngest

The MET Office

RSPB - activities

Early years

Tiny Happy People

Early Movers

Hungry Little Minds

World stories

CBeebies Radio – Listening activities

Learning at home

Ted Ed – Stay Curious

Twinkl - free home learning booklets from EYFS through to GCSE, you can download them here

Oxford Owl - free e-books for ages 3-11, and range of how-to videos for maths. They also have a parents’ page which explains how spelling and grammar are taught in schools. If you ever wondered what a 'fronted adverbial' was, here's your chance to find out!

Discovery Education - English, maths and science activities for KS1 and KS2 and also a section on coding

Scholastic - this US company have put together 20 days of cross-curricular projects to work through at home. The correct grade will need to be selected to match the UK year group:

PreK and Kindergarten = Reception and Year 1
Grades 1 & 2 = Year 2 and 3
Grades 3-5 = Years 4, 5 and 6
Grades 6+ = Year 7 onwards

BBC Bitesize - videos, quizzes and games covering the entire curriculum for primary, secondary and post-16 students

Topmarks - a collection of educational games covering all topics

Toy Theater - Educational online games

Chatterpack - a list of home Ed resources

Teachit Primary - resources and games to print for English, Maths, Science and Foundation subjects. Sign up for an account is required to download the free resources.

Teachit also has a range of resources for secondary school students. The website address is teachit + topic name e.g. English would be www.teachitenglish.co.uk, Languages www.teachitlanguages.co.uk

British Council – resources for English language learning

Oxford Owl for Home - Primary

Smart videos for curious minds of all ages: The Kids Should See This

Phonics

Teach your monster to read

Phonics Play - phonics games which follow the Letters & Sounds phonics programme. Pick the phase the child is currently on using the menu at the side.

Phonics Play is currently free for all users during the school closure period.

Username: march20
Password: home

Literacy

Unite for literacy - a US online library which provides free access to over 400 original picture books

Maths

CoolMath4Kids - interactive games covering the four operations (+ - x ÷) and fractions

Pet Bingo - an app for practising the four operations, children get to earn pets and care for them:

Snappy Maths - maths worksheets for quick mental arithmetic sessions, like doubles & halves, number bonds and times tables

Science

Science Museum Group - videos, activities and facts on lots of different science topics for all key stages

Science for Kids - a New Zealand based site with lots of science experiments and games for kids

Switch Zoo - the idea started from creating new animals by switching parts, includes lots of information about habitats, biomes, feeding animals and animal sounds

Mystery Science

Crest Awards – Science awards that can be completed at home

Topics (History, Geography, Art)

Virtual museum tours

Big History Project - Secondary

National Geographic Kids - covering animals, science, history & geography, a website full of fascinating facts.

3D Geography - free paper templates for making models, plus lots of geography information and resources

Geography Games

Computing

Tynker - marketed as 'coding for kids', this website is currently offering free access to its premium content

Code.org - founders of the 'Hour of Code' tutorials, this website offers computer science courses for students from reception through to A-level

iDEA Awards - Digital award scheme that can be completed online

Computer programming

Blockly

Scratch

Languages

Duolingo - a free platform for learning languages. You can learn from a computer, or download the app.