Nursery kids taking shelter from air raid sirens in Ukraine are having their stress reduced by teachers dressing up as fantasy creatures calling the cellars playing caves.
Official data show 16,207 air raid sirens have sounded in Ukraine during the past year, lasting for about an hour on average.
It is the first anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine today in the war which has left thousands dead and caused millions to be displaced or living in fear of missiles attacks.
Sirens warn civilians of a strike or shelling threat, prompting them to take shelter.
Families and children often spend up to eight hours underground, trapped by continuous attacks.
In a bittersweet show of resilience, young kids attending nursery do not fear the sirens anymore as their teachers set up playful drills to make children get used to the constant evacuations.
"They literally dress up as magic creatures and turn up loud music to reduce stress and children of going to shelter. Now children are referring to the air raid cellars as a cave where they go to play," Vsevolod Prokofiev of Save the Children Ukraine told the Mirror.
The basement is equipped for drawing, playing, and dancing and Svitlana, one of the teachers who must evacuate around 200 children, also said they have a place called the corner of solitude in their shelter.
She added: "For those children, it's of course better to be alone for some time and not to hear all that noise."
The World Health Organisation estimates that one in five people who experience conflict is at high risk of facing some form of psychological disorder, with symptoms growing more severe as hostilities rage on.
One 16-year-old, Sofia (name changed), remembers hearing her first siren and said: “I was having physics classes online when we first heard explosions 10 kilometres away. They then began to land on nearby streets.
“Our teacher instructed us to rush to the shelter. When I got to the corridor, I heard a loud explosion. I only managed to sit next to the wall, close my ears, and open my mouth to avoid being shocked by the blast wave.
“We then dashed to the basement, closing the door only to have fragments fly across the basement, the roof, and the asphalt. I sobbed. It was a typical morning, and here we are.”
At the start of the war, hundreds of thousands of children had to drop out of school and some no longer have teachers or classrooms due to the shelling.
“Schools must not become the battlefields where wars are waged and students are the casualties,” said Irina Saghoyan, Save the Children’s eastern Europe director.
Four months after the war started, teachers shared their horror with the Mirror.
“When you come back to your workplace and see your classroom door has bullet holes in it, you think why would you do that?” 25-year-old newly qualified teacher Viktoria Timoshenko whose school in Borodyanka is barely standing said.
Timoshenko’s boss and headteacher of Borodyanka’s school, Inna Romaniuk, describes the horrifying moment when they realised the war was coming.
She says: “I text parents and staff in capital letters and said do not to let children go to school today.”
WhatsApp became a live feed of horrors for Anastasiia Holovatiuk, a 24-year-old teacher from Makariv, 36 miles west of Kyiv.
She said: “You have 12-year-olds, 14-year-olds, 16-year-olds all typing saying: ‘we cannot turn the gas generator on because it will attract soldiers.’
“Another student was caught in Russian shelling while trying to flee and said they had to step over pieces of human bodies to get to safety."
