A Jewish mother in Maryland created an illustrated online book in a PDF format that helps parents explain to preschoolers and toddlers the school closings due to coronavirus.
My School is Closed by Meredith Polsky, co-founder of the Jewish organization Matan, is written from the point of view of a child, who says on one page “I’m not sick now. My friends are not sick. We are staying home to help people stay healthy.”
Polsky, also a developmental support coordinator at Temple Beth Ami Nursery School in Rockville, Md., told the website Kveller, “Short picture stories are a great way to help children adjust to new situations. When school closures became more and more real over the past week, I tried to think about how young children and children with disabilities would understand what was happening. I was worried about their level of anxiety, and I wanted to create something that would be age-appropriate and wouldn’t induce fear.”
Polsky sends similar illustrated stories to her students to help them cope with the first day of school and other transitions in their life, she told Kveller. She said she wants children “to know that their teachers love them and miss them, and wish they could see them.”
Polsky added, “I also wanted to reassure them that their teachers and friends are not sick, and that this kind of thing almost never happens.”
