The New Normal

Today was the first day that should have been a school day. It went pretty well, we created a timetable based on the Healthy Mind Platter. I thought I'd share it with you, in case you fancied doing similar. Bearing in mind my children are 8 and 5, this routine may not be suitable for everyone but it worked nicely for us today.

We didn't have any set timings, one focus lasted about 10 minutes and another for over an hour because that is how they were feeling. We talked a lot about how we were feeling, which to me is really important (especially as my youngest had a nightmare last night).

I would highly recommend that you be guided by your children's needs and your own. I appreciate a lot of you will be having to work from home and that is REALLY hard with children around. There is only really one category that needs your undivded attention and that is 'Connecting Time' which we all need.

The Healthy Mind Routine and Ideas The resoloution on these images isn't great so I'll pop them into the facebook group too. I hope that you find them useful. It would be lovely to hear about how you are getting on if you are using the Healthy Mind categories.

If you need to work alongside your children, here are some tips and ideas:

• Share with them what you need to do at the beginning of the day when you are talking about your plan for the day. Make sure they know when you will be able to play with them.
• Visual timetables work really well for younger children especially, but most children will appreciate knowing what's going on.
• Set them up with the toys/ equipment that they need before attempting to start work of your own.
• Let them know how long you will need to be working on a task in way that makes sense to them eg. "I'll be doing this job until the timer goes off / 3 O 'Clock / this programme finishes... and then we will play together/ go for a bike ride etc"
• Try to set realistic goals for how long you can spend on a task without being interupted.
• It may work for you to work for 45 minutes and then have, say 15 minutes connecting or playing.

Sorry if these seem really obvious to you!

Warm wishes to you, let's hope the sun keeps shining!

Julia