Dear Young People, Parents and Carers,

I hope you managed to have a reasonable Easter – I appreciate some of you will have found it really hard.

We’ve all have been trying to find our ‘new normal’ for a few weeks now.  Everyone has experienced major changes and thought about what’s important.   Lots of adults have been juggling lots of ‘important things’, like looking after both the older and younger members of the family.   No-one I’ve spoken to is finding this easy.   In a way I think that’s a bit comforting – If you’ve been finding the last few weeks hard you are normal!

‘Important things’ in the last few weeks have been ensuring our families have the basics and are safe, whilst working out who is ‘on our team’.   Your team will need to:

• Include everyone in your household, and through the wonders of modern technology your closest family and friends. 
• Respect each other and work together to reach common goals
• Look after each other practically and emotionally (this might mean time alone as well as time together).
• Learn how best to do all this as you go.
• Have fun together and celebrate success.

Success makes people feel good and this often happens when we learn.  Learning and success will look different in each household.  In addition to ‘home learning’, quality time together playing games and learning life skills and new hobbies is incredibly valuable.   I know lots of parents are feeling they aren’t teachers, but they teach every day.   They teach children to cook or ride a bike, how to be friendly, the importance of doing school work, how to keep going when they’re stuck, and much, much more.  Alongside the school work, please take this opportunity to teach and learn skills that will last a lifetime and celebrate having done so. 

Getting started with learning is often the biggest hurdle to success.  Below are questions to think about when started and completing tasks.  These are relevant to all home learning, whether it’s school work or learning a new skill/hobby, and not just in the next few weeks, but always.  It might be an idea to see how many of these questions you already know the answer to and talk to your ‘team’ about how to answer the others.

WHO is in your team?