Footage courtesy of South China Morning Post
DURBAN – After three months of isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic schools in China have reopened. Yangzheng Elementary School in Hangzhou, in eastern China, had their students design hats to help them with physical distancing.
The school’s physical distancing policy entails that students need to be at least a meter apart from each other. These hats are designed from easy craft materials or using normal hats. The hats are required to have 2 poles attached to either side of the hat. Each cardboard or paper pole is 1 meter across. The children got creative by adding balloons, cardboard flaps or tubes to their hats.
Some students got creative by adding leaves, flowers, feathers and stickers to their hats. The idea around these hats is to have a physical indication of how far each child should be from the other. If the flaps or poles collide, then the children are too close.
Ian Lam Chun-bun, the associate head of the Department of Early Childhood Education at The Education University of Hong Kong, told The South China Morning Post that: “As children can see and feel these hats, and when the ‘wings’ hit one another, they may be more able to understand the expectations and remember to keep their physical distance,”
The inspiration of the hats dates back to the Song Dynasty which reigned from 960 until 1279 CE. Emperor Taizu designed hats with long flaps for his officials, to prevent them from whispering to each other during assemblies.
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