Talking To Kids About COVID-19? Context Helps.
At Xyza: News for Kids, we believe that news is only as good as the context around it. When it comes to talking to kids about scarier topics such as COVID-19, it’s important to share the facts, as well as, things like why we wash our hands, what types of pandemics we’ve conquered before, what masks can and cannot do, and more. News is more about the here and now, wouldn’t you agree? Here’s a glimpse of how we’re sharing information about COVID-19 on www.xyzanews.com.
- The World Has Conquered Pandemics Before
- The Story Behind Handwashing
- Handshakes Are Sooo 2019
- COVID-19 Terms: What Does It All Mean?
- To Wear Or Not To Wear…Masks?
- How Are Countries Solving For COVID-19? A Look At New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Sweden. Also available as a video here.
- Can a Virus Impact Elections?
- Coronavirus Trivia: See If You Can Get It Right!
The World Has Conquered Pandemics Before
Are your parents stocking up on hand sanitizer? Telling you to wash your hands again and again? Keeping an eye out for sniffles? COVID-19 might be the first big virus-related disease outbreak that you’ve seen, but diseases spreading across countries have been a part of humankind for a long time. Thankfully most of them have been brought under control, so you might not have even heard of them. Read about pandemics that the world has conquered before here.
The Story Behind Handwashing
If you’re like us, you’re probably curious about how ideas get turned into reality. Well, here’s one that seems like a no-brainer to most of us: Washing your hands helps prevent the spread of illnesses like the coronavirus. Seems simple enough, right? Well, it took one doctor, multiple experiments, and a whole lot of opposition before the practice became mainstream.
In 1846, Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis was working in a maternity hospital in Vienna, Austria. He saw many women dying of a particular type of fever, commonly known as childbed fever, and he wanted to figure out why. So Dr. Semmelweis began experimenting by comparing two groups of women — one with male doctors and medical students delivering their babies, and the other with women midwives (women who specialized in helping with childbirth) delivering their babies.
Read about what it took to make this practice mainstream here.
Handshakes Are Sooo 2019
The coronavirus has the world rethinking the act of shaking hands. After all, if skin-to-skin contact is one of the most common ways that viruses spread, handshakes might not be the best idea, right? Recently, a French official advised against the tradition of kissing one another as a form of greeting, a German politician refused to shake hands with the head of state, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the World Health Organization’s director of pandemics suggested a unique way to greet one another: an elbow shake!
Elbow shakes are a creative alternative to the handshake, but we wonder: If shaking someone’s hand is such a virus-spreading action, why did we start doing it in the first place?
Go here to read the story behind handshakes!
COVID-19 Terms: What Does It All Mean?
By now, you’ve probably heard the terms “social distancing,” “distance learning,” “flatten the curve,” and a whole slew of other terms that — if you’re like us — had never heard before! Terms are great (if everyone knows what they mean), but it’s a problem when that’s not the case. Take, for example, the term “social distancing.” What if you know what it means but your friends don’t? Will they be offended if you’re staying at least six feet away from them? In more typical social situations, standing many feet away from a friend might give a very different signal than just “I’m staying away because I don’t want to possibly spread or catch a virus.” So, we’re taking a moment to break down these terms in the wake of COVID-19. (By the way, wondering what COVID-19 means? CO means corona, VI means virus, D means disease, and 19 is the year it was first identified.
Learn more about COVID-19 terms here!
To Wear Or Not To Wear … Masks?
We know social distancing is essential to curb the spread of coronavirus. The next best thing? Handwashing. Good so far. Now, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that people in the United States wear a mask when going outside. Masks have been in the news for a while now, even before these recommendations came into place, so why is everyone supposed to wear them now?
Read the story here.
How Is New Zealand Dealing With COVID-19?
Countries around the world are responding to COVID-19 in different ways. What is Italy doing that’s different from the United States? Germany from South Korea? Canada from Spain?
We begin this series with New Zealand. Check out what Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is doing here. Check out the video covering other countries like Sweden, South Korea, Singapore, and the United States here.
Coronavirus Trivia
Think you know all there is to know about the novel coronavirus? Test your knowledge by checking out our coronavirus trivia roundup here.
