Link4Life adds home-schooling activities and mental health support to At Home portal

Link4Life, the Rochdale-based culture and leisure charity, has announced a series of new initiatives aimed at helping those in the local community to get through the third nationwide lockdown.

As a direct response to school closures across the UK, team members have arranged a number of activities to assist parents with home-schooling needs.

Virtual history lessons, taught by the team at Touchstones Rochdale, will be available every Wednesday, and cover a range of topics including Ancient Egyptians and the Roman Empire.

Each week, an intrepid time traveller, Professor Jigget, uses the Mystery History Chest and the Sands of Time to investigate historic items, learn some interesting facts and test children’s knowledge, creating lessons that are educational yet guaranteed to keep young people entertained.

Alongside this, Link4Life’s Mental Wellbeing Engagement officers are working with schools in the borough to deliver a new six week Mindful Movement programme to support young people within the community at this challenging time offering activities including wellbeing workshops, yoga classes and mindfulness activities.

With lockdown currently preventing this face-to-face support in schools, the team has adapted the programme and created a variety of online videos on mindful movement, yoga, breathing and stretching, to encourage positive education and activity around wellbeing.

The videos will be released on Link4Life’s social media channels throughout February and March.

Andy King, CEO at Link4Life said: “We understand the struggles that lockdown has brought to our community, particularly to school children and their parents, who are often balancing home-schooling with their ordinary working lives.

“With Link4Life venues temporarily closed due to the national lockdown, we as a charity, have had to adapt so that we can continue to support our local community. Our virtual history lessons are a great way to teach and entertain children, and we’re confident that our team has created engaging sessions that offer a helping hand.

“Without question, providing mental health support continues to be a priority for us too. We understand that those children who are currently home-schooling can be finding it difficult as they are missing their learning in a school setting and are missing being with their friends, so the support we’re offering is crucial. It’s by sticking together that communities will make it through these tough times.”

Donna Livesey, Head of Sport and Physical Activity at Link4Life, said: “We understand that the current lockdown and recent covid-19 restrictions have impacted mental health and wellbeing and resulted in anxieties, uncertainties and worries in children and young people.

“We know that if our children and young people are not in a good place with their mental health, this will impact on their ability to learn and achieve. 

“The Mindful Movements programme covers key elements that are needed to support young people with their mental wellbeing and create a better understanding of how they can manage situations and feelings, so we’ve had to adapt quickly to create the series of online videos to continue support whilst children are home-schooling.

“We’ve received some really positive feedback from pupils who have told us they are using some of the breathing techniques to help them in situations where they may be feeling angry or anxious, and we’ve had live zoom sessions with pupils carrying out yoga sessions at home with their parent/carer joining in.”

Link4Life is updating home-schooling resources regularly. Each video, along with free, printable worksheets for each topic can be viewed on the Link4Life At Home portal.