Instead of a New Year’s Resolution, how about asking your family what they’d like to do or learn this year? Resolutions are great, but a desire to learn something new or ‘do’ or ‘make’ something special are longer-term goals which can be focussed on and put to one side at times. A ‘project for new Year’
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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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“The most important thing is to never stop questioning.” Albert Einstein “What do you want to be when you grow up?” My household’s current ambitions are an astronaut, a particle physicist at CERN, a spy and an underwater policeman! I love the aspiration, hope and imagination, but also that Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) professions
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“Nurturing Natures; Attachment and Children’s Emotional, Sociocultural and Brain Development” by Graham Music. Review by Mel Newton, mother of 1, Sussex Star rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Rich in the most current scientific research, yet engaging and accessible; A deeply informative and inspiring read for anyone involved with the care and wellbeing of children and young people. Graham Music Graham
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“The Gift of Failure: how to step back and let your child succeed” by Jessica Lahey. Reviewed by Isabelle Regent-Ngwata, mother of 2, Hampshire. Star rating (4 out of 5) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “The setbacks, mistakes, miscalculations and failures we have shoved out of our children’s way are the very experiences that teach them how to be resourceful,
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We know play is important. It is a child’s work. But is there more to it? With current media awareness around mental health, we reflect on how play can make a difference for a child’s long-term mental wellbeing. Mentalhealth.org tells us that 1 in 10 children and young people are affected by mental health issues.
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Calling all engineers! 2018 is marked as the Year of Engineering by the government[1]. This is to address a shortage of young people aspiring to be engineers. The shortage is predicted to be 20,000 short of the jobs available in the sector leading to a significant impact on productivity and growth in the UK alone. Big investment from partners such as
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Children learn by imitating. A baby’s first smile mirrors another’s grin; the first babbles mimic a parent’s speech. It’s therefore hardly surprising that the earliest role play children act outcomes from familiar domestic scenes. Examples include chatting away into a toy phone or cooking up a storm with plastic food and making mud pies. They
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Now fall off… As a kid, at the end of a riding lesson I was always encouraged to fall off my pony, learn to tumble, and getting up unhurt, dust off my knees and get back on again! What I was learning was that falling off wasn’t a big deal. For kids, learning to “fall off”
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Kids; creative opportunists! Seems like they can spot opportunity where adults struggle to. And turning junk, or waste products, into valuable resources is one glorious way children do this. Unleash potential through junk modelling In my view, it’s the most wonderful and uplifting creative activity. I love how it unleashes the huge variety of possibility
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