While lockdown is necessary, children suffer from not being able to go to school to learn and be with their friends. Learning at home during Covid has impacted them more than we can imagine. After just one day of homeschooling, my 5-year-old wanted to express his feelings to his teachers and classmates.
This letter captures the reality of learning at home through a child’s eyes.
Dear Juf M. and friends,
I really miss all of you!
I wanted to go to school today and I was very sad. My mum said we could do school at home but I knew that was not going to be as much fun as real school.
At school we are learning about animals and I want to keep learning about them.
My mum convinced me to read some crocodile books. One of them was about an alligator called Snappsy. Alligators have round noses, not long and pointy like crocodiles!
Then we made an awesome alligator craft, using an envelope. It was a hand puppet.
We also listened to some songs about crocodiles, in Romanian, English, French and Dutch.
My brother and I learned how to draw a crocodile. Mine was named Crocosaurus and my brother’s Croco. I also drew some eggs that were a bit cracked, about to hatch.
My crocodile had a shopping list, like the one in the book. He only ate things that started with the letter R, including me and a Rock Star.
We also watched a real fight between a shark and a crocodile on youtube. The shark won!
My favourite thing about today was when we made crocodile goo with shaving cream and blue and yellow food colouring. It was green and we put cars in it to see the traces they leave, we wrote in it with our fingers and we had so much fun!
But this was not real school and my mum is no Juf.
Love,
R.