Children of military personell from Catterick Garrison took part in a free virtual workshop run by the charity Little Troopers this week.
As part of a nationwide virtual roadshow being delivered by the charity throughout June, children who have parents currently serving in the Armed Forces logged in together to explore some the unique challenges they might experience such as having a parent deployed overseas and regularly having to move home and school.
All of the workshop activities were from the charity’s dedicated Little Troopers at School programme, which was created by education experts to give all schools easily accessible resources to support military children in the classroom.
Carla Maguire, a teacher at Cambria Primary School in Catterick, said: “The children had such a fun afternoon doing the workshop. We got to openly chat about feelings and the support available.
“The activities were fun and engaging and had the children thinking but more importantly, smiling.
“We are very thankful to Little Troopers and the support they give. We look forward to lots more adventures and using the amazing resources to grow and learn.”
The children took part in storytelling, imaginative play, movement and drama and were shown tools that could help them navigate some of the challenges they might face as military children, either now or in the future.
The workshops were funded by the Armed Forces Covenant Fund and offered schools a snapshot of some of the resources available in the Little Troopers Primary School Resource Pack and Military Child Wellbeing Course.
Louise Fetigan, founder and operations manager at Little Troopers, said: “There are tens of thousands of military children across the UK and the support they receive in school is very varied depending on where they live in the country and what school they go to.
“Our aim with the Little Troopers at School programme is to make it really easy for schools to have targeted resources they can use with their military children – whether that’s one or two military children or two hundred.”
