By Mata Press Service

Getting your kids to study at home is stressful at the best of times.

With the COVID-19 shutdown of schools, this has become all the more challenging for parents.

To help parents keep their kids learning at home, two Vancouver-area women, whose brain-training courses has been adopted by several BC school districts, have begun making their digital program freely available during the COVID-19 crisis.

The Brain1st program, which was developed in BC, is a series of animated videos using engaging digital characters to get children ready for their learning day at home, in under 10 minutes.

The strategies and concepts in the online videos have been used in local schools for the past three years as “brain warm-up” exercises before classes.

The Brain1st program uses digital characters - ‘Belle’ and ‘Tex’ – to lead students though a variety of activities to positively impact behaviour, learning and movement. The fun, 10 minute animated online videos automatically progress each day as users log in.

“Students don't always come to school ready to learn and teachers have been using the program in their classrooms to positively impact academic achievement,” said Laura Iverson Dieleman, co-founder of the Brain1st program, who has spent the last decade focusing on neuro-behavioural disorders in children.

“We developed this program to stimulate the brain so teachers could spend more time teaching and less time managing daily classroom challenges,” said the mother of three, whose children start their home learning day with ‘Belle’ and ‘Tex’.

Elisa-Maria Chong, a second-grade teacher at Douglas Road Elementary School in Burnaby described the Brain1st program as “one of the most intelligently crafted programs to aid in the social and emotional development of children.”

“The Brain 1st activities are engaging for the students, and easy to implement for the teacher. I use the program videos before lesson times, and it greatly helps the students focus,” said Chong, a teacher of eight years.

“I think now more than ever, students are faced with additional stresses and are often distracted by the complexity of their lives and I believe elementary students would benefit from the simple, yet powerful, exercises and activities put forth by the Brain 1st creators."

Cally Bailey, another of the co-founders of the Brain1st program, has spent over six years studying and practicing MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction), a flexible and customizable approach to deal with the daily stresses of life.

“We are now offering our program to be used by parents and grandparents at home as children cope with the stress of studying in isolation,” said Bailey.

“The program is designed to talk with children at various levels not talk at them…it’s about making the learning experience enjoyable rather than a chore

“It can be watched off any device… Parents can play it anywhere in their home, we have teachers streaming it as well to their students,” added Bailey.

The Brain1st program is being offered for free until the school lockdown is lifted in BC.

To register go to https://brain1st.ca/