Life skills learned during lockdown learning

Parents have promoted gardening and cooking as home-learning activities

Lots of informal learning has been going on

There have been school closures across the world in an attempt to slow the spread of Covid-19. Families have had to adjust to home-learning and online learning and the usual tests and exams have been cancelled. We have heard lots about the negatives of this; parents finding it difficult to keep children engaged and on-task, lack of technology to access online learning, young people not making progress in their learning at home and falling behind. There have indeed been many issues with home-learning and it hasn’t been easy for many families. But there have been some positives to come out of home-learning, which we should recognize. Many parents may have struggled with motivating their offspring with the formal learning set by schools, but there has been less structured learning happening. Teachers speak of parents and children sharing photos of plants grown from seeds and meals cooked together.  Parents should be congratulated for encouraging these real life skills!

At the start of lockdown, food shortages prompted many families lucky enough to have a garden to plant seeds. Children read and followed the packaging instructions, ensuring the garden location was just right, not too sunny or too shaded. They ensured that the distance between seeds was correct, giving enough room for plants to grow and making sure the depth was sufficient. Children tended their seedlings over the weeks, watering them as required and getting rid of weeds. And when the careful nurturing paid off, children harvested the vegetables and fruits. Photos were shared with teachers and put in the school newsletter or on the school website, sharing the “fruits of their labor”.

Moreover, parents then helped children use what they had grown in meals. They learned to prepare their vegetables, read recipes, cook and serve food. Again, photos of cooking creations were proudly shared on social media and with teachers. Healthy, home-grown and home-cooked food – delicious. And what an amazing learning process!

Maintaining the interest in gardening and cooking

Well done parents and carers! You have helped the younger generation with important life skills and this should be recognized. We must not underestimate the positives of these skills. We now need to continue to foster these interests in growing vegetables and fruit and cooking. Even as schools reopen in the new academic year, let’s continue with our gardening and cooking.

There are a plethora of food websites and wellbeing websites that emphasise the value of connecting with nature and the outdoors, fresh air and exercise. Moreover, many websites stress the importance of food on physical and mental wellbeing. Parenting support groups, bloggers, educational websites, schools, chefs, cook book writers, agriculturalists, let’s continue to encourage the new found interest in cooking and gardening of our young people.  

Translating content to reach more families

Let’s make sure we provide content of interest to a younger audience and make it relevant to them. Furthermore, by providing content in different languages we can reach a much wider group of young people. You might like to ask yourself if your website or information can be accessed by all members of your community easily. By providing your website in community languages you could support a much wider audience of families. Linguation.com is an online translation agency that can help with the translation of your website content, blogs, information sheets, recipes etc. No job is too small and the agency offers a vast number of language combinations. The agency will assign a native speaker to your translation as well as a specialist in website translation to ensure search engine optimization. Translators will also ensure the text is localized and suited for the target audience, in this case younger people. More information about website translation may be found at: