Our NEW parenting challenge: entertaining normality in times of war
We all #StandwithUkraine and feel locked up in war anxiety, but our children do not need to be. Find below three things you can do to keep up their spirits.
The day after Russia invaded Ukraine, my #STEAMgirl came home with a war story. She and her classmates were talking about having their school bombed in the upcoming days. Vilnius International School sits on Rusų gatvė (Russian street), that’s why.
Crazy how kids’ imaginations work!
I laughed at and dismantled the horrid forecast, but then I understood both war worries and how kids think. They hear parents talking; they see bits of the news and confabulate stories at school. It is better for parents to step in and correct any wrong assumptions children might have about the times of war we are all living in now.
Talk with the kids about how they feel and what they know
The next day our school shared a couple of tips on how to talk with kids about the war in Ukraine. The homeroom teacher also emailed to inform us that he talked with the kids about how they feel and what they know, staying away from talking about what might be coming.
It is true. No one knows what is coming next. Russia has invaded Ukraine with the plan of a quick win. As a result, thousands of Ukrainian women and men are fiercely defending their homeland. Their stiff resistance to the Russian onslaught is driving Putin mad. He has now ordered the Russian minister of defense to put the nuclear forces on special alert.
Teach kids nothing justifies violence
We roleplayed the aggression of one state over another state and talked about what a sovereign state means. A sovereign state is an independent country. Its government decides in the best interest of its people and no other country can command it what to do, or take territories from it.
Russia under Putin breached Ukraine’s sovereignty on multiple occasions: when he forbade Ukraine to join NATO, wanting to keep Ukraine under his thumb; when he recognised the independence of the Ukrainian region of Donbas; when he commanded the Russian army to invade Ukraine and gain control over the whole country.
This is violence and it is simply unacceptable. That is why we #StandWithUkraine and we joined thousands of Lithuanians marching in protest against Putin’s invasion. My girl was there, amidst hundreds of other Lithuanian children, witnessing the solidarity and chanting in one voice “Slava Ukraini!”
Keep the daily routine and give the sense of having things under control
I read in the resource document the school has provided that “The more regular, clear and controlled aspects there are in daily life, the safer children and teenagers feel.” This was enough of an argument to keep up with our #STEAM routine. In his letter, the homeroom teacher told us that our fourth graders have recently learned more about geometry, how to measure and draw angles; they worked with coordinates and identified different places on a map using lines of latitude and longitude.
Coordinate grids sounded like music to my ears! It actually reminded me of childhood games, and some online search prompted me to other cool practice ideas that involved planes, coordinates, quadrants and graphing. I made it part of our daily #STEAM fun routine.
To conclude, war is ongoing and we are next to it. We never know what tomorrow will bring, so let us focus on today. Routine helps with blocking the panic and if you need some more excuses to turn off the influx of news and have fun, bring in a #STEAM routine. It helps you focus on (re)discovering the beauty of this world while spending time with your children.
Below you can find a list of resources and ideas we tried out ourselves, and you can explore them too. I would love to hear back from you, about what worked and which other things you’ve tried.
Stay curious and strong,
Alex
#STEAMwithME ideas and other resources
Read more tips on how to talk with kids about the war, prepared by the Lithuanian NGO Children Support Center — https://bit.ly/3sny3Xp
Scout the HP printable series to download and print a checklist. My girl further enhanced one of their templates in Procreate and we now have a personalised ‘STEAM checklist’ to keep us happily busy. Check out the HP printables for their collection of educational worksheets!
Learn more about longitude lines and time zones with the wonderful family-friendly BBC series ‘Around the world in 80 days’. ‘Tales by Light’ is a good Netflix alternative.
Have fun with coordinate grids. I subscribed to the Teaching With a Mountain View blog and got the ‘Coordinate Graphing in the Garden’ as a FREEBIE.
Play the ‘airplanes’ game that teaches graphing on a coordinate plane by placing aircraft and guessing each other’s coordinates. I have known this game since my childhood, but it might be popular only in Romania. An international proxy would be Battleship, which you can read more about here.
