Design a rainbow

25th March 2020
Dear Parents/Carers,
We hope that all our families are staying safe and making sure that you are staying at home (unless of course you are a critical worker). We are very thankful to all our critical workers for playing such an important part in the COVID-19 response. And very thankful to anyone else, who isn't a critical worker, for staying at home to help stop the spead of the virus.
 
School is a very different place at the moment and we have been incredibly busy setting up our childcare facility for our critical workers. We are having to run on a skeleton staffing, ensuring the safety of staff and pupils. We are all adapting to our new roles but everyone desperately misses all our families.
 
Home-learning:
Staff are working hard to upload home learning activities which will be via Eschools. I know that many children have been accessing this, but if your child hasn't logged on yet their details are in their home learning book that they should have. You may find that some websites like Classroom Secrets and Times Table Rockstars are crashing at times. They are just struggling to cope with the sheer numbers of pupils trying to access the site but hopefully over time this will improve.
 
Design a rainbow and spread some happiness and positivity: You may have seen on social media that lots of schools are asking their children to make a rainbow and stick it in their window at home. We would love everyone at Gayton to do this. We have already been drawing rainbows with some of our critical worker children and will be posting to our Twitter pages for you to see. But as a way of spreading hope, positivity and to help us feel more connected please can everyone encourage their child to paint/draw a rainbow and pop it in your window and then tweet a picture of it making sure you tag in @GaytonPrimary so we get to see it! We really feel that this would help to generate some positivity and hope at this incredibly challenging time.
 
Animation & Story book explaining the coronavirus for children. Last time I shared a link- the site went down! Many apologies for that and at the time, I just didn't have the chance to respond to parents.However, below I have copied two weblinks which are useful for children to explain the cornavirus. T
 
This is a useful animated story book for children to watch which explains the coronavirus.
 
 
This is a short story to support children in understanding COVID -19 and to give them a clearer perspective of the current events: (This is the link I shared the other day- it definitely works now so if it doesn't it might just be because of the sheer volume of people accessing it!
 
 
Your child may not need to ever watch these videos or read the book but if they are struggling now or in the future they might just help them a little.
 
I have also attached a newsletter from the SEND Regional Network. There is some wonderful advice in here for families with regards to coping during the coronavirus outbreak.
 
I would recommend that all parents take the time to have a read of this as you may find there is something in here that may help you or your family. We can't wait to see pictures of all the Gayton rainbows appearing on our twitter feed as somehow that will help us to feel more connected to all our families.
 
Take care and stay safe everyone! Mrs McAleny