Hi, I'm Kezia
Mother, teacher, writer, illustrator
coming back to school in a bubble
Coming back to school in a bubble is a book for children, designed to ease anxieties and prepare children for their return to nursery and school in the Covid-19 recovery period. The book gently explains social distancing and how things will be different in a non-threatening way.
video book
In response to popular demand – Coming back to school in a bubble is now available as a video. Lots of teachers tell me they are starting their day with the video as a gentle reminder for the new routines.
I hope it can help in your setting too.
what people are saying
about me and the book
I am a Key Stage 1 leader and teacher at Shere Infant School & Nursery in Surrey. Throughout the lockdown period, like many teachers, my role quickly evolved beyond that of ‘teacher’, and the relationships that were originally formed at the classroom door, and over the table at parent consultations quite suddenly became much, much deeper.
Conversations about home learning would inevitably turn to the virus and how it was impacting upon the children. Anxieties were clear and profound, and parents who were doing their very best to protect their children from the adult themes that seemed to consume the media were the first to admit that the impact on their children was near impossible to avoid.
School and Nursery should be a safe place, for some children it is the only safe place. The idea of the children in my care feeling anxious and scared about their eventual but inevitable return really affected me.
I am very fortunate to work in a very forward-thinking school, with a head who inspires creativity and nurtures children’s holistic wellbeing over a desire to pump out the right statistics (with the net result of course being that we pump out very good statistics!). Our approach to tackling the new guidelines was, from the start, focussed on how we look after the children’s mental health and wellbeing, and the book was born out of that focus.
My goal was to help our children to understand the very adult themes of social distancing and how this would impact upon their time at school in a friendly, unthreatening way, without undermining the importance of the measures that would be in place.
Originally it was intended for the children of our school, but it quickly gained momentum and I was receiving requests to use the book from other schools within the first 24 hours and within a few short days schools from countries all over the world were sharing the book with their colleagues and families. The feedback from parents and teachers everywhere has been overwhelming. Teachers, parents and children love the book. Parents are using the book to prepare their children for the return, and teachers (including me!) are using printed copies in the classroom and playing the YouTube video to start the day and remind everyone of the changes they need to remember.
It has been really important to me that as many children can benefit from it as possible, and as the crisis continues and schools continue to slowly open their doors I hope that plenty more children and teachers will find some comfort within the pages.
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