The late American astronomer and astrophysicist, Carl Sagan, described our planet as the ‘pale blue dot’, described as such after seeing an image of earth taken in 1990 from the Voyager 1 space probe, from a distance of about 6 billion kilometres. His book, “Pale Blue Dot”, explores claims that earth and its inhabitants are
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Plastic, plastic everywhere. It certainly seems to be the case when you consider that an estimated 9 million tons of it end up in the ocean each year[1]. In 2015, 448 million tons of plastic was produced[2]. In the last 15 years we have produced nearly half of all the plastic that has ever been
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Making dens is a serious business in my household: barely a day passes without sofa cushions and blankets being rearranged into a den! We live in a flat with no outside space to call our own. Despite park trips and sports clubs, there remains plenty of energy, so in the absence of a garden our inside
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Kitcamp: a new inspiration for loose parts play You may not have heard the term ‘loose parts’ before, but you’ll recognise the type of play. Imagine a child tinkering with a collection of seemingly unrelated objects, e.g. sticks, pine cones, cardboard tubes, shells and buttons. They’ll use these bits and bobs to build a tower,
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The new school year commonly starts with an ‘ourselves’ topic. The same planning and the same intentions. Getting to know one another, build relationships and assessing. With Kitcamp’s ‘I am me’ toolkit we explore alternative ways to launch this topic. It is a great way to get to know the class and to help them get to
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We all know the importance of maintaining a child’s self-esteem. How a positive self-image and confidence impacts on learning. That children with high self-esteem generally feel loved, competent, happy and are therefore productive. If children acquire this self-esteem as a result of successful experiences, surely play opportunities are ideal for building success? How does child-led play
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“Flipping the classroom” Some years ago in my school, we trialled ‘flipping the classroom’. We wanted it to be child-led learning. To move away from the model of a teacher at the front of the room telling children what and how they would be learning. Introducing enquiry based learning by starting with a ‘big question’
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