How is your family coping with the coronavirus pandemic?
Apr 25, 2020 1:19:26 GMT 9
Post by Judit on Apr 25, 2020 1:19:26 GMT 9
Hello everyone,
Well, my boy has just turned 8 – he’s in second elementary - and his trilingual journey is on a good track. At least the spoken language...reading is coming along but I haven’t really managed to practise writing in ml1 or ml2 regulary so far.
I did start something fun with him these last two months that we’ve been home, that he enjoys. I came up with the idea of treasure hunting, I hide a small toy, a bar of chocolate or a lollypop somewhere in the house, then write clues for him in ml1 or ml2 to find it. It helped to improve his reading a lot, and he actually asks for it. Yeah, I’m hoping he is doing it for the sake of reading not for the small gift he gets at the end.
These clues are like: “Go to the room where you have your shower in the evening and look inside the washing machine.” “Now go to the kitchen, get a chair, climb up to get your favourite cereal box from the cupboard, and see what’s inside.” He is really enjoying these hunts, and for a while it became his favourite part of the day during the lockdown.
The first few weeks were really hard emotionally, my son was having these panic attacks, he said he couldn’t breath, his heart hurt and so on... I was so worried about him but had to show a brave face in front of him anyway… I never watched the news when he was around but inevitably he overheard phone conversations, people asking about my husband, saw people wearing masks etc. Then one day I had an idea, I started making fake phone calls, not in front of him (not to get him suspicious) but within earshot anyway, saying “Yeah, I heard, great news, it’s nearly over, they found the cure, everyone is celebrating, people are getting better etc..” and it worked! The next day he only asked me about 3 times (instead of 50) to look inside his throat to see if anything was blocked in there...so I made a few more fake phone calls that day, sounding really happy and relieved and he finally calmed down! No more panic attacks!
We also came up with the idea of making videos for his classmates to repeat everything they’ve done (should have done!) in English this year. They weren’t doing much during the year, they’re doing even less once a week online now. Then we made them in ml1 too. You can check them out here:
I hope everyone is safe and well.
