Blog for IG and VR
7 articles selected
Tears of happiness
One of the more important skills that young children need to acquire is the ability to treat their friends kindly, to share and cooperate with them. To help with this, the teachers will model behaviour, as two of them did this week to demonstrate that being kind to another can lead to happiness. ...read more
Party
Miss Susanna's lunch bunch is nothing if not fun. This week she made an attempt at a mini-project on spring. With the London temperature close to zero, the children were less than impressed and decided to put the popcorn they had made (to represent blossom) to better use. One sought out reels of coloured ribbon, and the rest laid the table with plates and glasses of water. Once the entire area had been festooned with satin streams, the children partied. They talked and laughed and drank their water and declared, to a person, that it was the best party to which they had ever been. ...read more
Tectonic plates
The volcano experiment is the most glorious way of teaching children about Earth’s construction. You get thought-provoking words like magma and tectonic, as well as bicarbonate of soda, red food dye and vinegar. Naturally, you have made your own volcano model, and painted it black and red. What the children really want to do is fill the volcano’s centre with the bicarb and the dye, pour vinegar on to that and then watch the magma pouring forth. This is the fun part. But it would be wrong to say that the learning, the terminology, the understanding of the process, is the boring part. Children are curious as to why things are as they are. If you let them “erupt” the volcano, that is one thing, but if you explain to them, as Miss Ruthie did to James, that most volcanoes are located where tectonic plates meet, then the eruption takes on additional meaning; the process is more satisfying because it contains more information. And children, being like little sponges, don’t forget. Days later, James chose six identical hexagons from the tessellation shapes, slotted them together and then called across the classroom: “Look, Miss Ruthie, tectonic plates!” ...link
Exoskeleton
Never let it be said that young children don't pay attention.
Una, aged two, is in the hospital waiting room, awaiting her scan. In the room are other people, some of whom are concerned that the unpredictable nature of the average two year old may make their already difficult day even more difficult. Others have faith in Una's mother who has spotted the teddy bear, and the scanned image of the teddy bear's insides which, unsurprisingly, show the teddy to be filled with soft, squeezy stuff. Ever keen to improve Una's mind, she explains that the image shows teddy's insides and that the scan Una is shortly to have will show her insides, in fact her bones because people have skeletons inside them rather than soft, squeezy stuff. At the mention of the word skeleton, Una looks up at her mother and, aware that sometimes parents don't know quite as much as they pretend, says, with a lovely lisp, "Some people have skeletons on the outside". Whether the rest of the waiting room recognized the lack of faith emanating from Una's mother as she asked "Really? Who?", they were, to a person, astonished at the answer: "Lobsters!" ...link
Sugar
The summer term is (often) the term when we teach the children about the continents. Amongst many other activities, they make their own map of each continent and position on it items that represent features that can be found there eg Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, or the Eiffel Tower in Europe. For the South American map, sugar is one of the features, with Brazilians not only producing masses of the stuff but leading the world in sugar consumption (59 kilos per capita per year!). ...read more
Summer School surprise
Miss Emily is fortunate in having an older sister who loves her. This comes in handy when the lure of the Isle of Skye proves more potent than the first day of Summer School! As a result, Sam arrives bright and bouncy on Monday morning and is introduced to the children as Miss Emily's sister. Most of the children take this with equanimity. But one little boy (let us call him James) is not prepared to countenance a universe without Miss Emily in it. For him, Sam is Miss Emily, just a bit funny looking. Tuesday arrives and James busies himself all day making togas and boats and practising his discus throwing. He makes no comment when his dad arrives to pick him up but when he gets home he flings himself at his mum and says: "Mummy, Mummy, it's all OK. Miss Emily has turned back into herself again!" No amount of persuasion by Mum would persuade James that Sam had been anything other than a funny looking Miss Emily! ...link
Blog 8th July 2012
(The names of children have been changed)
The sun is shining (yes, really) and Sean is busy, fussing over his post office, writing all sorts of important stuff. A customer (Miss Felicity) approaches ...read more
7 articles selected