Contd from my earlier post
Let’s start it with the fact that Play can be glorious. Have you ever observed a child playing by herself? they are imagining, they are calculating, they are designing and they are building. Science, mathematics, design and statistics together. To quote Roman philosopher Lucretius “Its a voyage in mind throughout infinity” And that explains it all. Kids are imagining and playing even in the midst of a pandemic, believe me, they are. How I wish a world where we could support them instead of making their life a little bit complicated because of our (parents) busy schedule.
And thus the whole concept of Nook and then the Bubble came up.
The 21st century needs new-age solutions, rather than sticking to old school scenarios where everything was significantly different. Research says there are many ways to encourage play. Our culture is preoccupied with marketing products to young children. Parents of young children who cannot afford expensive toys may feel left out. Parents who can afford expensive toys and electronic devices may think that allowing their children unfettered access to these objects is healthy and promotes learning. The reality is that children’s creativity and play is enhanced by many inexpensive toys (e.g, wooden spoons, blocks, balls, puzzles, crayons, boxes, and simple available household objects) and by parents who engage with their children by reading, watching, playing alongside their children, and talking with and listening to their children. It is parents’ and caregivers’ presence and attention that enrich children, not an elaborate electronic gadget.
Parents’ Nook is an effort from the team to offer such care at the community level. We are always listening to customers, iterating, and relaunching and everything is bootstrapped to date.
Let’s get back to our original topic,
Once I shared my earlier post with the Nook community, I saw the excitement, and eventually, questions and discussions followed.
How you are going to introduce?
Who all will be invited in the first version?
Do you need an indoor space?
How you are going to keep your Bubble safe.
So here in today’s post, I will try to answer all your questions.I would say that maybe at some point I am frustrated with everything happening around? Are we even thinking about our children? And the caregivers?
Research says Deprived of the opportunity to play and interact with their peers in person, young people risk losing those skills and instead of developing confidence and self-assurance are instead in danger of feeling isolated and insecure.
On top of this, they are likely to have feelings of despair, fear and helplessness as the virus disrupt their lives.
In between the tragedy of the lives lost to Covid-19 and the impact on the economy, we are in danger of underplaying how traumatic this whole experience is and will be for everyone, particularly for young people whose characters and personalities are still being formed.
The impact on young people’s mental health is likely to be significant and long-lasting.
Thus this huge effort of creating safe Bubbles with neighborhood families started here @Parents’ Nook. Imagine a micro-community where kids play safe, parents can work and even home-school their children until the age of 7 yr old. Or if we think bigger with all the talented and like-minded educators in our community why not a stable regular open-ended Nook or call it cloud Nooks maybe? We stick to our values, we stick to our mission everything remains the same just it gets more regular?
Oh yes, the only thing is it has to be outdoors, all our Nooks (more than 200 at this point or maybe more who knows) has been outdoors. Nature is healing and we make it a point to create these outdoor Nooks with our amazing educators and caregivers. And in the time of Covid being outdoors is a blessing.
We also have another interesting thing, coming in once we roll out the Bubble app to our first 50 customers in South Bay, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco. Dates coming soon, follow our Facebook group or twitter about the app launch date or subscribe to us.
To answer the above-stated questions:
a)We are going to introduce it to 50 families who have used Nooks earlier. ‘
b)We will be not doing anything indoors at this moment. But we do have a plan of creating outdoor spaces where you can work comfortably (2nd phase).
c)We believe that repeatedly interacting with the same group of people in bubble, we can rely on less confinement and allow strategic social contact while still flattening the curve. Our approach balances public health concerns with social, psychological, and economic needs for interpersonal interaction. Statistical data and simulation from bubble members will let us know the safety of a Bubble.
d)We are following the below research to keep our bubble safe “individuals need to selectively consider who they want to regularly interact with and, over time, restrict interaction to those people. This reduces the number of contact partners rather than the number of interactions, which is particularly important when contact is necessary for psychological well-being. “ And we believe in this totally. So you need to do a grocery run ask your bubble member, need a CSA delivery, why not ask the CSA guy to delivers in the same space, your neighborhood coffee shop can take care of your coffee needs,and this all within 1 mile of the radius. This is not new for the Nook community as we have done this earlier too. We are happy to listen to more suggestions on this.
At parents' nook we are committed to helping our families and caregivers stay safe,healthy and happy. And this is a little step from us to keep things sustainable for everyone in the community.
If you have any suggestions, thoughts or advice, please drop an email to tanaya@parents-nook.com.
Lets create the future one step at a time.
Tanaya
References
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0898-6
