Social Distancing at School: Best Practices to Teach Kids

You may be wondering with so many schools doing a hybrid school session for fall 20200 & beyond, how you will possibly get your children to wear masks at school and keep them on in order to prevent the spread of germs.

Children are notorious germ spreaders. If you need any convincing, just think of their daily habits. Talking too close to each other, touching unnecessarily, slobbering on toys which they then share because of that is what they were told to do, and other delightful germ infested practices seem to be the standard kid modus operandi, at least for younger children.

While it may be more difficult to control the activities of little ones, you can at the very least explain to your kids age 10 and up what the proper protocol is for preventing the spread of germs during school.

Distance

Maintain six feet of distance from you and your friends and classmates. Kids may have trouble gauging the amount of space. You might have them practice at home by spreading their arms wide out and explaining that approximately two hugs’ worth of space is sufficient for staying away from friends so as not to breathe germs on them.

Other ways to illustrate 6 feet of space is the use of a pool noodle which happens to be approximately that length. Your pool noodle maybe 4 feet instead of 6 feet, in which case you can use one and a half pool noodles to emphasize your social distancing lesson. The basic jist is that the pool noodle will help them get into the habit of talking to their friends from six feet away.

Labels

Another good practice that you can start at home is placing labels on the floor to indicate the distance that we should be standing away from friends when out in public or in school. Many retail stores such as Walmart and Target already have such indicators placed on their floor. You can use masking tape or some other temporary marker to train your children at home to begin staying farther away from each other. Or, purchase floor stickers in bulk on a site like :