EDUCATION, EDUCATION…ISOLATION?

Tales Toolkit and Lockdown
– What have we learnt?

As September edges closer, with the promise of a new school year and a ‘new normal’ for education everywhere, here at Tales Toolkit HQ we’d like to reflect on the past few months – not just the stormy seas, but the brilliantly resourceful people who’ve helped keep the ship of early years learning sailing on.

Home is where the class is

On the 18^th March parents across the country turned on the telly, or picked up the newspaper, and saw that their children would, by the way, be joining them at home for a little while. By the weekend, schools were closed to all but a few children, and a nation of families had to learn how to home-school.

It was clear that help was needed. Parents needed help keeping their kids stimulated, happy and learning; and schools needed help providing resources and connecting to their children and families.

So, we helped!

It’s a family affair

We work with some amazing schools who create fantastic, imaginative Tales Toolkit stories with their children. We wanted to support the continuation of this storytelling at home whilst also supporting our schools…so we created Tales Toolkit for Families!

All of our signed-up schools had free access to the family area of the Tales Toolkit website for all of their families. Once there, they would find stories, activities, and ideas for storytelling at home created by our founder Kate, the fantastic practitioners who use Tales Toolkit in schools, and even some top experts like Alistair Bryce-Clegg and Greg Bottrill.

We want to say a huge thank you to schools and families. We provided the equipment, but they were the ones who made it happen and brought the storytelling to life. It’s their hard work, creativity and enthusiasm that really makes a difference to the children.

And here are some great stories that the children were able to do remotely:

It’s great to see families making stories together, and parents and teachers being able to work together in these tricky times.

AND THE GOOD NEWS IS…

IT’S HERE TO STAY! We are delighted to announce that Tales Toolkit for Families will be an ongoing resource.

We’re super excited that, with the help of funding from OVO Energy and support from Goldsmiths University of London, we will be able to develop parent training and extend on the resources we started during lockdown. We can also announce that our upcoming free webinar (Register Here) with the amazing Alistair Bryce-Clegg will now be available to all parents!

We’re super grateful to all the practitioners and families that have been creating and sending us stories, sharing ideas and chatting with us. So a big, big thank you to all of you.

We’ll leave you with some highlights from our ‘Stars of Lockdown’ – RAF Brize Norton – whose Tales Toolkit stories managed to get on the radio! They used their Tales Toolkit bags to create a story explaining lockdown to the children on the last day of Nursery. It was, by all accounts, an emotional day for everyone.

Check out their video!