What would be a better way to teach children about these important skills than through a captivating streamed story?  

Storyline Online is a free resource for learning during COVID-19. It has a huge video library of loved storybooks read out loud by celebrated actors, plus free a Activity Guide for teachers linked to each story. Children read and respond to works of literature with emphasis on comprehension, making connections among ideas and between texts with focus on textural evidence.

Let’s take for example The Rainbow Fish. Rainbow Fish is an award-winning book about a beautiful fish who finds friendship and happiness when he learns to share. With this story it is possible to teach children about reading and writing + friendship skills.

Friendships skills are something that never ever go out of style. Therefore, discussing about kindness, feelings and sharing is always a smart idea. Especially now, when children might be staying at home and playing in smaller groups – even by themselves – it is good to remind children about the important cornerstones of friendships.

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Teaching mathematical skills to children is an important part of the curriculum. Each teacher on Earth must have ideas how to teach numbers and counting to their group of children, but this term it all might have to be done remotely.

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Learningmole in Youtube offers great videos for teaching mathematical skills for children. The videos are originally made for home schooling and they are perfect for remote teaching as well. In case in-school teaching is possible, these videos give you loads of ideas how to get children interested in number related activities at school too!

First of all, it is a good idea to teach children how to count, for example from 1-10. Video ‘Counting to 10 for Preschoolers and Kindergarten Children’ is great for that, as it shows how to count with your fingers. This video can be shown in class or the link can be sent home to families. With the video children also hear the name of the number and see how the number looks like. This develops children's number recognition skills.

After that you can choose an activity for the children that challenges them in a right level. Learningmole has a selection of math activity ideas that use legos as a tool for learning through play. Video ‘Lego Number Games – Counting Games’ offers children fun opportunities for recognizing numbers and counting. Depending on your teaching methods you can do this activity in-class in small groups or send the link of the video home so the same activity can be done also at home. (In case legos are not available, any blocks or even rocks work!)

To support learning, sing rhymes (for example: Five little ducks) and ask children to count outloud in all sorts of situations (for example: how many cucumber slices they have on their plate).

Before you start, take a look at this guide to help you modify the activities to a right age level:

The challenge

All over the world, coronavirus is tearing children's lives apart when the familiar childcare centers go into lockdown. Centers struggle to find new ways to keep the children enrolled and continue learning.

As uncertainties remain, experts suggest that a Blended Model combining traditional in-class and distance learning will most likely be the safest mainstream scenario for the coming months.

A preschool or childcare center with a creative blended approach can adapt rapidly and flexibly as the coronavirus situation evolves over time.

What is a blended model?

In the beginning of the new term familiarizing with the alphabet is a traditional theme to start with - whether children's learning is in-class, at home or a blended approach is used. Children gain interest in letters and writing in their own pace, and when they do, it is good to take advantage of their thirst for learning.

Learningmole in Youtube offers great videos for learning the alphabet. Videos are originally made for homeschooling, so to they are great for remote learning! Teacher can share the video for children who are staying home or if the situation allows - show it in class.

There is variety to choose from, but video ‘Learn the Alphabet for Toddlers’ has the classic ABC song which is awesome for toddlers! They get to hear the names of the letters and see how the letters look like together with a familiar melody. After the ABC song the video shows also Learning the Alphabet with Foods and Animals. Children can deepen their knowledge of letters and connect them with familiar words, such as D for Donut or E for Elephant.

Children who stay home can watch the 'Learn the Alphabet with Foods' video (starting from 1.05) and then search for foods shown in the video from their fridge! Children can then document back to their teacher which ones they found (eg. L for Lemon and W for watermelon) for example with a video or drawing. Kindiedays has a great messaging system, that can be used for fluent communication between home and school, also group messages between children are great for learning together. Kindiedays collects data for child's individual e-portfolio and gives teacher an opportunity to assess children's work and development.

Collaboration should be viewed as a journey, rather than a destination. It is an ongoing and developing process of finding a common ground and learning how to play off each other’s strengths to better serve the customers. Sometimes it can be hard to let someone else to take over, but like anything, trust and collaboration skills can be polished with experience.

Finnish education start-up scene lives through cooperation – it is an entire ecosystem, where the private and public work together developing real life tested and innovative solutions for the specific needs of the schools and learners. In fact, it’s very common for Finnish EdTech companies to include teachers and students in the development process of their products. Well, who would know better how to make the digital learning tools more functional, educative or fun than the users themselves?