Coronavirus Social Story
Author: Sharon Pomeroy
Description: Creative Commons licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Why will life be different
for the next few weeks?
Coronavirus
March
2020

I have heard people talking about a new bug that makes people feel poorly. It is called Coronavirus / Covid-19.
Our prime minister, Boris Johnson has asked everyone to change the way we live, to help stop people catching the bug, because some people get very poorly with it and need to go to hospital.
Coronavirus can make people have a sore throat, feel hot and have a cough. Most people need to stay at home, rest and drink plenty of water.
stay at home rest drink water
Boris Johnson and the people who help keep the people in our country safe have sent out important messages to tell people to live differently. This might feel hard because lots of things will be different to normal, but it is very important to help keep everyone safe.
Here are the big things that will be different.
Schools will be closed
Church will be different and we won’t be able to meet
Cafés and lots of places I like to visit will be closed
Daddy will work from home every day
If any of our family gets the bug, we will need to stay at home until we are all better.
We won’t be able to see friends
We will all need to help each other. Mummy and Daddy know I might have questions to ask, as this is hard to understand. This booklet is to help answer some of my questions.
Why can’t I go to school? Because everyone needs to be safe from the virus, and people who are ill with the virus need to get well again. I can still do some school work at home with Mummy!
Why is Daddy working from home? Because everyone needs to be safe from the virus, and it’s safer for him not to be on the train or in the office. He can still do his work from home.
Why can’t we go to church? Because everyone needs to be safe from the virus. We can still worship God, send messages to our friends and listen to services on the TV or on Facebook Live.
When can we go back to school? When Boris Johnson and the people who help the country stay safe tell us that it’s safe for schools to open.
Lots of things will be the same at home, and there are lots of things we can do to try and help each other whilst it is different. Here are just a few ideas:
Play in the garden when the weather is dry—use the climbing frame, score baskets, play football, jump on the patio
Make sure my guinea pigs are safe and happy, feed them, help look after them.
Get out for walks down the canal and the Country Park
Listen to music in my bedroom, watch TV in my free time.
Keep practising my reading and writing, do puzzles and use games on my laptop
Keep a diary of what I do each day