Home Schooling- an honest response.
Nurture families share some of their Lockdown highs and lows.
We wanted to share with our families some of the highs and lows of ‘Home Schooling’ preschoolers, now that Lockdown AK2.0 is well behind us. Thank you so much to these two Nurture families for sharing their thoughts with us.
What were the challenges you have been facing whilst working from home during these unusual times…
During the level 4 lockdown, I continued to commute to work for 3 days a week. Michael quickly learned how to run a business from home whilst sole parenting Teddy (2yo) and Elliot (then 3 yo). I quickly learned how to pretend that I didn’t mind the boys watching who knows how much more than the age-adjusted recommended daily dose of ‘Bluey’.
“In the midst of lockdown, we would tag-team parenting and work extraordinary hours to fit it all in.”
We’ve found it super challenging. One of the biggest challenges for us has been adjusting our life goals and plans to the circumstances we are facing. In the midst of lockdown, we would tag-team parenting and work extraordinary hours to fit it all in. We are tired. As are so many of our loved ones. To be frank, with lockdown 2.0 now under our belt – I’m near ready to ‘block’ that friend of mine who keeps posting memes about what we should be grateful for. That isn’t to say I’m not grateful.
Can you share thoughts on the 'Nurture at home' programme offered to support children's learning during the lockdown…
As ‘high users’ of the Nurture at Home programme, we’ve learnt some wonderful parenting tools with the help of the Nurture at Home programme – so many ways to create fun learning experiences with the boys that didn’t require a trip to the Warehouse for supplies! I can now make play dough, we (sometimes) don’t throw away toilet roll ends, and we routinely collect all sorts of things from Jellicoe park to make ‘art’ with. We have an enhanced appreciation of the special bond the boys have with their teachers just by watching and listening to the boys responses to seen their teachers faces and hearing their voice via Storypark. We also love and appreciate the blessing that is the Nurture kitchen and equally we value the integration of Te Ao Maori in to all aspects of the boys learning – at Nurture, and ‘Nurture at Home’.
More broadly, we’re learning some invaluable life lessons over what we call in our whare a ‘home holiday’ …. Slowing down works really well for our littles doesn’t it? (no ‘getting ready’ battles when there’s nowhere to go!) Our boys got to be with the two people they loved and trusted most in the world 24/7, and were still connected to their Nurture whānau in such as wonderfully creative and engaging way.
One of the biggest stressors for me was our boys return to Nurture at level 3 (yes … we didn’t have it quite as tough or as long). The public emphasis was on the perceived associated health risks of ECEs re-opening. This was so expertly balanced by our Nurture team in their explicit appreciation of the equal (and for me personally, much more important) need for the littles to feel welcomed back to a positive, calm, and ‘nurturing’ environment; and their humble execution of this undertaking. Another thing we’re grateful for… but we won’t create a meme.
Ngā mihi nui
Alex and Michael
Nia and Seren’s family share their Lockdown experience.
This year has been pretty challenging for all of us. As the COVID cases started rising in Early March we had talked about it with Nia (4.5yrs) and what it meant in terms of washing our hands, coughing into our elbows etc. but we tried not to make it sound too scary or overwhelming. However when Nurture closed and all of NZ went into level 3 and then into level 4 Lockdown it definitely made for some harder conversations! During the first lockdown my husband Elliot was working from home but busier than ever as he works for a company that supply food and drink products to the supermarkets. Of course we were extremely grateful that he still had a job and was able to work from home but it came with other challenges too.
“Of course we were extremely grateful that he still had a job and was able to work from home but it came with other challenges too.”
He was working extremely long hours and needed to lock himself away in our office in order to concentrate. Seren thought this was a hilarious game and kept popping up right in the middle of his video conferences!! I wasn’t working at the time so was able to plan and do activities with the girls to keep them busy like painting and colouring and building things from big cardboard boxes but it also meant that I literally couldn’t even go to the bathroom alone during the day for approximately 6 weeks! We obviously made it through the first lockdown ok - I also loved doing my online gym workouts from home in the garden with the girls joining in too. The good weather was a huge blessing!!
During June and July it felt like we had pretty much gone back to normal. The girls were back at Nurture and activities like swimming were back up and running. Then in August I started a new job. I’d been at work for 4 days when we went into level 3 lockdown. This second lockdown has been a whole new story for us - it’s been a huge juggle as I had only just started so hadn’t finished having an induction or any handovers from my colleagues and I didn’t know how to do most of my job yet! We have had to come up with some strategies to help us get through it including one of us getting up early and getting a couple of hours work done without interruption then switching over to parenting for a couple of hours. We have tried to keep the mornings screen free and so during the afternoons is when we would play the Nurture stories and songs on the tv so that they could both watch and join in. The thing that Nia really loved in particular was hearing mentions of her classmates and their birthdays and also another activity where all of their names were read out! She was telling us about games she’d played with her friends as each of their names were read out. Seren loves the songs the most and one of the songs that we had to play again and again was the Shake your Sillies out one from Poonam, so much fun!
We are so grateful for all that the team at Nurture do and know that the girls are in great hands when they’re with you. Nia hasn’t been there for a few weeks but just this morning she was telling me about her friends and her creating separate recycling bins when they noticed the bin was getting full recently in the Moreporks room and how they worked as a team to do it!
