Have Your Child Squeeze a Stress Ball During a Virtual Lesson
Sometimes the best hacks are the smallest; a thing so useful and obvious in hindsight that you really should have thought about it yourself. And maybe you did it (good for you!). But if you, like me, haven’t thought about handing your child a stress ball as they walk into their classroom Zoom meetings, now is the time to give it a try.
When I posted an overview of ideas on how to tame kids after school breakdowns earlier this week, user Kinja Shc32 came up with another method to help calm their torn nerves:
I give my elementary school students stress balls to use during videoconferencing, and then we go out after school and run around and help ourselves to try to mitigate the problems.
Running and snacking is good, but entertaining them while video chatting with classmates? This is a very good idea. While this would normally be an obvious danger to throw, without the other children around it could actually be used for its intended purpose.
Children find it difficult to sit quietly throughout the school day when they are actually in the classroom with other students. But sitting still in front of the screen while their teacher speaks, but her face keeps freezing and for some reason their sound doesn’t work and no one hears them, and god it’s boring … they need to channel their energy this way, to help them focus and not distract others while talking.
So give them a stress ball and let them do some push-ups. (A fidget cube will work too, but I would stay away from spinners – they won’t be able to resist the camera for classmates to see.)