What do kids need to thrive and learn all they need for adult life? Let’s ask Peter Gray! In this two-minute animated summary of a lecture on the value of play, educational researcher Peter Gray gives six fundamentals for self-directed learning. He’s a Research Professor of Psychology at Boston College, specialising in evolutionary perspectives on […]
Even if youâre little you can do a lot, you Mustnât let a little thing like âlittleâ stop you – Matilda the Musical, ‘Naughty’, Tim Minchin Changing the world is a hard job. Best to start early, donât you think? Here are a bunch of ways you can help your kids live a life […]
Remember Susan Cain? You may have seen her fabulous TED talk that I posted a while ago, based on her book, Quiet: the Power of Introverts. The guru on introverts in an extraverted world, she gives ten tips for parenting introverts on her website, and now she’s got some ideas for how teachers can nurture introverts in […]
This is an all-in-one post for Week 2 of our Lent with Kids plan. To fill in some background, start here. You can also see the series index here. Week 1 of Lent is almost done, and Sunday is a-comin’! I’m experimenting this week with just one post with everything we need for the week. Let me […]
(Western) Lent in 2020 begins on Wednesday 26 February This is the first proper weekly post of our Lent with Kids series. If you’re reading this after the first week of Lent, or if you want to see the range of other Lent ideas we’ve got, you can also head here, to the series index to see what’s […]
A warm welcome to Rochelle Gribble, here with an insightful analysis of the recently-introduced, highly controversial ‘National Standards‘ that New Zealand primary schools are now required to report on twice a year. Rochelle is a once-was, sometimes-is, may-be-again secondary teacher. She has a Masters degree in Education and sometimes even gets to use it! However, […]
Set in 1930s Mississippi, in the year that Cassie realises being black can be a liability, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D Taylor is one of my favourite children’s novels. It’s packed with Mighty people I’d love SBJ to get to know. Cassie is lucky to have been born into one of […]
Hands up if you had a favourite teacher. You can read about some of mine in an earlier post in this series, and plenty of yours are celebrated in the comments below the post. A passionate teacher is gold. Gold. Rita Pierson was one, and in this 7-minute TED talk, she rouses her audience of […]
Over Christmas, my Dad discovered Alex Archer. Following our family tradition of combing each other’s bookshelves for treasures to steal (in my case) or borrow (in his), he came across the first two books of the Alex Quartet. He chomped through them in a day or two and had to search out the next couple […]
If you had a six-year-old child, and institutional schooling had never existed, how would you go about preparing them for adult life? In the next few posts on unschooling, I want to tease out a few different issues and discuss them separately. Today it’s the different social experiences schooled and unschooled (or homeschooled) kids have. […]