Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You nannies giving up your free time to connect with former charges during this are really wonderful!

+1.

+2. Our former nanny does this and it means the world to my boys. They beam just seeing her face. I’m so grateful she’s always remained in their lives.

Anonymous wrote:You nannies giving up your free time to connect with former charges during this are really wonderful!

+1.

The app caribu is free through summer
It’s a fun app to read books together, draw, tic tac toe and a few other games to play while video chat

Anonymous wrote:You nannies giving up your free time to connect with former charges during this are really wonderful!

Current and former, depends.

You nannies giving up your free time to connect with former charges during this are really wonderful!

We play tic-tac-toe (child drawing on the white board so I can see), hangman, charades, Pictionary, boggle (2nd grade and up), break the ice and bee tree (child does all actions, I just tell them which one on my turn), memory (child flips my choices as directed), etc. Younger kids feel important because they have the games there and they’re helping me because I can’t. We also do rhyming, songs, dancing, math stories (with toys as concrete help), phonics, colors, shapes and patterns. There are something’s I can’t do from a distance (science experiments and new movement games!), but most of the rest is possible, as long as they already have the supplies. It does involve kids being more responsible and/or having parent set up and clean up, and attention spans are shorter for less desirable games, but it is workable. (The larger the screen for a young child, the better it is, because they don’t understand that the camera is the same size regardless of how big my face is.)

My former charge is fascinated with animals. We watch the same National Geographic episode and the talk about it on FaceTime. Sometimes we draw pictures of the animals in the episode.

Anything like that for your charges? It’s as close to a same-experience as I can get with him.

Have you tried Bingo? My mother plays bingo with my seven-year-old on ft.

I am a nanny who is still very close to two former families and, before COVID, saw my former charges frequently. Now my former charges FaceTime me several times a week. One charge is 6.5 and the other two brothers are 5 and 3.5. I’ve been reading the Magic Treehouse series with my 6.5 yr old charge as well as playing some pretend games with him. For the other family, the 5 and 3.5 brothers, I’ve been doing make-a-story (they tell me three things they want in the story and I make up a story about two boys using their middle names).

Do you do anything else on FaceTime to engage young children?

Thanks!