With the latest announcement from the Prime Minister and a full ‘lockdown’ now in place, community has never been more important, Over the next few weeks getting in touch with people in our worlds, checking in and making each other smile is going to be essential for all of our mental and emotional health, and whilst the lockdown does prevent face to face interaction, there are plenty of fantastic tools out there to ensure we can all enjoy some form of normality.

At Muddy Boots, we are going to be using some of the tools listed below to host online coffee mornings, live streams, staff catch-ups and more so we can all keep in touch, but they are also great for seeing your nearest and dearests throughout this season. If you have the contact details of other families at Muddy Boots, we would encourage you to try some of these with your little ones to help them stay connected with their friends too.

ZOOM

Zoom is quickly becoming a firm favorite at Muddy Boots, enabling us to meet with all the team at once to keep them updated on all the changes the lockdown and partial closures presents. Definitely meant as more of a meeting tool, but still great to use for catching up with the family or friends, within the free plan you can jump on with up to 100 people for 40 minutes and chat away!

FACEBOOK MESSENGER

Facebook messenger is a great one for slightly smaller groups, supporting up to 8 people at time with video calls. The calls are free and there is no duration limit, and they even have some little filters to make you smile… all you need is a Facebook account!

HOUSEPARTY

Houseparty is a great little app which helps groups have simple drop-in, drop-out chats. It shows you when your friends are available, meaning you can enjoy a few spontaneous calls, as well as it being really easy for you to jump into calls with minimal fuss.

Oh… and there are games! Once you have it downloaded the app and are ready to go, you just click the little dice in the top right, and together you can enjoy things such as Pictionary!

There are also a tonne of other options available, as well as group messaging apps like Whatsapp and Telegram, plus your usual texts and phone calls. More important than what you choose to use is just making sure you are using something, and that you keep in touch with people throughout this very bumpy season!

If any of the tools above or any others we don’t know about help you stay in touch we would love to hear about it! Drop up a comment on Facebook or an email so we can share it out further!