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Parents Add Role of Teachers to Keep Children Busy amidst Lockdown

Curtailing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has become imperative as parents who spoke to Funmi Ogundare, explained the measures they have been taking to make their children realise that rather than playing football on the street, kicking out the pandemic is a collective responsibility

Parents are taking on the dual roles of teachers and guardians as they devise ways of making children and their wards appreciate the importance of the stay-at-home directive of the federal government and measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic. They are teaching, counselling, as well as advising and controlling the activities of their wards during the lockdown.

 

Activity schedules like regular school timetables have also played a major role in most homes. Others are guiding their wards into online certificate programmes, supervised book reading, as well as creative writing.

Parents say they now take the time to explain the current health situation and its impact on everyone, teaching them how to prevent the spread of the pandemic and the danger inherent in mixing with crowd, keeping safe and practising simple hygiene, constant hand washing, disinfecting surfaces, as well as relating to them the importance of safety and staying indoors.

 

A parent, who is the Director of Marketing and Communication, Babcock University, Ilishan Remo, Ogun State, Mr. Suleiman Joshua told THISDAY that he has been reassuring his children that if they do these simple things, they will be fine, adding that he has been keeping them productively engaged at home to kill boredom.

“I drew up a schedule of daily activities involving everyone: prayer time, house chores stating who does what, food time, time for exercise stating who leads each day, study time in which each person touches base with their academics, leisure time dedicated to storytelling by anyone who has any interesting stories or experiences to share, reading time where each person picks any book of his/her choice from the book shelf, read a chapter and summarises it.”

 

The book, he said, is read in advance at least a day to sharing it with everyone, adding that it is to develop the culture of reading in them and broaden their experiences about peoples, places and life generally.

“I have advised them to write down what they think of people, events, ideas and places. By so doing, they will begin to design and defend their perfect world such that even people that listen to what they have done, will be awed by what they will discover.”

 

The President, Universal Learn Direct Academia (ULDA) and former Rector of Lagos State Polytechnic, Chief Olawumi Gasper said: “The time will be used to create a story around Covid-19 pandemic, by sharing personal experiences and challenges during the lockdown into a novel. A good script with good story lines will attract publishers and streams of finance for the young author.”