Children are the future!

Everyday there are new discoveries that change the way we look at the development of children

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Too much pressure?

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/school-starting-age-the-evidence

I feel the need to share thus wonderful article written by David Whitebread, Faculty of Education at Cambridge University, about the lack of understanding pervading early education in the UK. Sadly, this is a problem in many other countries too. Even the International School I help out at uses the Primary Years Programme to focus on numeracy and literacy skills from 4 upwards so the children are ‘ready’ for Grade 1. David Whitebread is involved with the Cambridge Review, an on-going study into education, research and policy in the UK. The insights and results that are regularly shared with the press and policy makers are interesting, and often at odds with what is conceived to be educationally correct, e.g. Starting school as early as possible! Parents are often coerced into thinking that academic learning at an early age is great - ‘our daughter is only three but can count to 10 and write her name!’, but actually it is more important that 3 year olds are learning social skills and empathy, and developing their own powers of inquiry, curiosity and problem-solving skills. Read the article and see if you agree! “In England, children now start formal schooling, and the formal teaching of literacy and numeracy at the age of four. A recent letter signed by around 130 early childhood education experts, including myself, published in the Daily Telegraph (11 Sept 2013) advocated an extension of informal, play-based pre-school provision and a delay to the start of formal ‘schooling’ in England from the current effective start until the age of seven (in line with a number of other European countries who currently have higher levels of academic achievement and child well-being). This is a brief review of the relevant research evidence which overwhelmingly supports a later start to formal education. This evidence relates to the contribution of playful experiences to children’s development as learners, and the consequences of starting formal learning at the age of four to five years of age There are several strands of evidence which all point towards the importance of play in young children’s development, and the value of an extended period of playful learning before the start of formal schooling. These arise from anthropological, psychological, neuroscientific and educational studies. Anthropological studies of children’s play in extant hunter-gatherer societies, and evolutionary psychology studies of play in the young of other mammalian species, have identified play as an adaptation which evolved in early human social groups. It enabled humans to become powerful learners and problem-solvers. Neuroscientific studies have shown that playful activity leads to synaptic growth, particularly in the frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for all the uniquely human higher mental functions. In my own area of experimental and developmental psychology, studies have also consistently demonstrated the superior learning and motivation arising from playful, as opposed to instructional, approaches to learning in children. Pretence play supports children’s early development of symbolic representational skills, including those of literacy, more powerfully than direct instruction. Physical, constructional and social play supports children in developing their skills of intellectual and emotional ‘self-regulation’, skills which have been shown to be crucial in early learning and development. Perhaps most worrying, a number of studies have documented the loss of play opportunities for children over the second half of the 20th century and demonstrated a clear link with increased indicators of stress and mental health problems. Within educational research, a number of longitudinal studies have demonstrated superior academic, motivational and well-being outcomes for children who had attended child-initiated, play-based pre-school programmes. One particular study of 3,000 children across England, funded by the Department for Education themselves, showed that an extended period of high quality, play-based pre-school education was of particular advantage to children from disadvantaged households. Studies have compared groups of children in New Zealand who started formal literacy lessons at ages 5 and 7. Their results show that the early introduction of formal learning approaches to literacy does not improve children’s reading development, and may be damaging. By the age of 11 there was no difference in reading ability level between the two groups, but the children who started at 5 developed less positive attitudes to reading, and showed poorer text comprehension than those children who had started later. In a separate study of reading achievement in 15 year olds across 55 countries, researchers showed that there was no significant association between reading achievement and school entry age. This body of evidence raises important and serious questions concerning the direction of travel of early childhood education policy currently in England. In the interests of children’s academic achievements and their emotional well-being, the UK government should take this evidence seriously.” - See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/school-starting-age-the-evidence#.dpuf

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Love it. Learn it. Live it

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Trees aren’t blue ......

You know, I secretly dread it when a child comes up to me in class and shows me a picture they have drawn, or they are standing back from the easel obviously finished with their painting, and it needs to be moved to the drying rack. What should one say? Do you risk commenting on it only to be told that you have seen it all wrong, or worse yet get the silent treatment!

Is that a car or a bus, a cave or a house? Is it a lot of smoke that has been drawn or just ‘go-faster’ lines like they have in cartoons, or even Batman himself?

It can be really difficult!

As a parent, you are probably going to be the first art ‘critic’ your child meets! So, what we say will be very important, both for their self-esteem, and for their creative self-confidence. So, before we comment, maybe we should think about what is so important about allowing our children to ‘mess about’ with pens, pencils and paint.

Creating art, with whatever medium is available, should be something that we enjoy, and which makes us more aware of our environment and the things and people in it. Some of us may be so creative and plucky enough to become working artists eventually, but most of us just muddle along with our daily lives. That shouldn’t stop us from enjoying being creative though.

There are many benefits to taking the time to enjoy working creatively. A few of these are listed here:

• Self-esteem and respect, both for oneself, and for the individuality of others • Manual dexterity and physical co-ordination • Develop organizational skills • Self-discipline • Problem-solving, risk taking and decision-making • Visualization and planning • Spontaneity and responsiveness • Develop a personal aesthetic • Relaxation and de-stressing • Developing different ways of communicating ideas, thoughts and emotions

Over the years, I have tried to limit my comments, so that the children tell me themselves what it is they have drawn, painted or created. Here are some strategies that have worked so far!

When I am presented with a picture with a ‘this is for you, Ms. Amanda’ I always thank them, and then comment on it with what I call open questions, such as:

‘Would you like to tell me about your picture?’ ‘This looks like a story …’ ‘I see you/ve used a lot of red here, why is that?’ ‘I can see someone here in a pink dress, is that you?’

If the picture is very abstract, I comment on something to do with the picture such as the lines, shapes, structure or colour. Maybe two colours have merged to make another colour, or there is a striking green triangle shape strategically placed in the middle. Maybe all the colours are bright and summery, making me feel happy, or dark and wintry making me feel cold!

Comments referring to how long, or how carefully, they have worked on their picture convey that you value all the effort they have put into making that picture, and making it for you. Children soon become aware that those automatic comments we make, which we think are good enough at the time, such as ‘wow that’s great’ or ‘that’s nice/pretty/colourful’ actually don’t mean anything at all. They are empty and show that you aren’t really paying attention to them or their work at all.

A couple more phrases that should be banned from the comments list are:

‘That’s really …… interesting’ ‘People don’t have blue faces’ (or whatever strange colour something is!) ‘Next time, make it bigger/shorter/tidier/less ….’ ‘Here, let me show you how to draw a …..’ And never ask that awful question ‘What is it?’  I think that question can dampen the artistic sensibilities of even the most enthusiastic child!

Remember all trees do not have to be green, or all skies blue! And there is no right way or wrong way to use tools and materials. If a child wants to experiment with three pencils held all together in one hand, or one in one and one in the other, that is perfectly fine – the key word is ‘experimenting’

Schools often focus on colouring pages because they are seen as being more educational, as the children have to learn how to control a pencil enough that they can colour between the lines. However, they offer little artistic or creative license, apart from colouring a tree blue for example. I wish they would instead offer more plain paper and let the children create their own pictures, and let them tell you what their picture is all about.

So try and make your praise more informed or conversational. Comments like:

‘I see you have used a big brush here’ ‘That’s a very jagged, or round, or weird shape’ ‘I like the effect of all that blue’ ‘Those crisscross lines are powerful’ ‘Why is there so much red?’ ‘What happened to the ……?’

I guess many parents don’t see too much of their child’s artwork once they get to school until the end of the school year, when you will suddenly receive a wad of paper – hopefully dated and tied together! Even if it seems a pointless exercise, sit down and look through it with your child. They may not be able to tell you everything about a certain picture, and some pictures they may well have forgotten entirely, but that does not mean to say it didn’t mean anything at the time, or that it wasn’t important at the time.

Being able to create pictures that are instantly recognisable as a car, house, person, takes time and practice! In the beginning pictures will morph from one thing to another as your child draws, or as they talk about them later – the house he drew for daddy, may well have become a car by the time daddy gets to see it! All daddy will see will be a ‘scribble scrabble’ whatever it represents!

Approach every image with wonder and an open mind and your child will come to realise that their artwork is valued for what it is, which will in turn encourage them to draw and paint their own thoughts, ideas, experiences and emotions. They say there is an artist inside every one of us!

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Positive parenting! What is it, and 10 ways to achieve it!

Working and living in an international environment, you get to see huge variations in the way parents discipline their children, perhaps more so than you would otherwise. Different cultures have different ideas about what it takes to raise a child. Some parents will never use the word ‘no’ to young children, as they believe they are too young to understand, others believe smacking is perfectly acceptable. What does the word discipline mean to you?

The word discipline has originates from the Latin word disciplina, which means, “to teach or to instruct”. So, thinking about how this should relate to raising children I believe we should be using discipline, not as a way of punishing our children, but as a way of guiding and redirecting them to make the right choices, and do the right thing. And yes, that can mean saying No, but in a nice way!

Positive discipline is all about deepening your relationship with your children, understanding why they act up or react as they do. It is about self-control (yours and theirs), empathy (put yourself in their shoes) and respect (for others, as well as for themselves). It is not about allowing your children to do as they want because you are afraid they may not like you if you refuse them something. It doesn’t help anybody’s self-esteem if one partner in the relationship becomes the doormat or punch bag! So, you need to establish rules and boundaries, and police them sensitively yet firmly!

I know it all sounds so easy, until you are faced with an angry two year old who will not stop screaming because they only want ice cream for dinner!

Children, though need boundaries, and actually grow up to be calmer, more empathetic people if they are given them. They learn life skills such as patience and respect, and social skills such as controlling their emotions and understanding the needs of others.

Here are 10 strategies to help you with your positive parenting skills, culled from various behaviour books and local authority information that I have read, and disseminated to play groups and nurseries over the years. Hopefully, some will resonate with you!

1. Understand the behaviour, before you try to correct it. What happened and why? The ABC of behaviour is Antecedent, Behaviour, Consequences. If you have an idea about why the behaviour started and then seemed to get out of control, then you can start to work out a way of either avoiding it or dealing with it next time the same thing happens. 2. Acknowledge your children’s emotions, and give them the words to tell you how they are feeling by saying 'I know you are sad/angry/upset/hurt right now ……’. The same goes for you too. Tell your child that you are sad he hit his baby brother, or threw his toys down the stairs - it’s all part of learning empathy and understanding others. 3. Think about why your child is feeling this way. Consider that most of the time your child is being told what to do, what to wear, when to play, what to eat - they make very few choices for themselves and this can sometimes become overwhelming and frustrating. 4. Pick your battles! OK she has chosen a greenT shirt and pink trousers today - they clash terribly but does it matter? 5. Give them the opportunity to contribute to the family schedule. That could be by giving them little jobs to do around the house. At school everyone wants to have a turn as the teachers’ daily helper. We love feeling important and useful! 6. Get them to think about how to solve a problem! A puzzled look and 'How can we sort this out then?’ Gets your child thinking past their immediate needs, and starts them along the road of negotiation, cooperation and compromise. Essential for successful, happy adulthood! 7. Give your child time to work it out for themselves. You won’t always be there to support them in making good choices, or negotiating something with a playmate. Try not to get involved too early. 8. Remember to use positives not negatives, and always start a command with the child’s name. Why? Well, human nature means that we listen as soon as we hear our name, and children often seem to switch off when they hear the word Don"t or Stop! So change 'Stop picking on your sister’ to 'Kate, play nicely with your sister!’ (And acknowledge it later with a thank you!). 9. Bear in mind that when children are tired, hungry, too hot or too cold, thirsty, over-stimulated or in a different place to one they are accustomed too they will often react with anger or contrariness. Let’s face it, we can get grumpy too if we are tired, etc. 10. Never underestimate the power of a hug, a smile, a kiss or a thank you! Love really does conquer all!

At the root of all the advice above is one big word - COMMUNICATION! Talking with our children, acknowledging and giving voice to their emotions, mistakes, needs, challenges and triumphs is essential to positive relationships and positive parenting!

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5 tips on screen use for young children

Have you ever been at the supermarket and seen children playing with mum or dad’s mobile phone whilst they shop? Apparently, according to a couple of mum’s I know it is a great way to keep them occupied while they rush around doing what is perceived as a rather boring but essential chore, and it also stops them making demands for sweets, toys, chocolate as shelf upon shelf rolls by laden with various goodies!

I am all for an easy life, but thirty odd years ago we parents didn’t have that option. Our children had to trail around with us, helping (if they felt like it) or not (more often the case as they got older!). They seem to have grown up OK despite that ‘trauma’!! I can understand why today’s parents use whatever options they have available to make life easier, however, there can a downside to taking the easy way out.

I think children these days find it more difficult to self-censure themselves. By that I don’t mean not talking about things, but I mean controlling their emotions when it comes to things they want right now. By avoiding the issue of saying no to that cake or bar of chocolate or packet of crisps, you are avoiding the issue of being a parent. Children are turning to phones and tablets as part of their coping mechanism, rather than learning how to cope with disappointment as and when it happens. And parents are avoiding that nasty part of the parenting job of saying no, and meaning it!

Some family therapists in the US have reported families coming to them with problem children who are ‘addicted’ to smart technology. The children scream when the phone or tablet is taken away, or the TV switched off, and because the parents find it difficult to cope with their screaming child they think their child has an addiction problem. Maybe they do. It is interesting to note that in many cases the parents used their phone or tablet, in the first place, as a way of calming their child when they were upset, rather than allowing their child to scream out their rage and frustration, and learn for themselves how to self-calm and cope with situations they did not like. It is an interesting development in our society and maybe not a good one.

I have been asked at school many times about how much time 3-5 year olds should spend on computers or watch TV. It is in fact, however, not just computers and TV we should be considering. If you put together the amount of time your child watches or plays with a screen based medium, you might be surprised!  Phones, tablets, computers, laptops, TV’s are all the same really, despite the fact that some are interactive media, using touch screen or mouse movement to achieve a page turn or swipe things into place. They are all used as teaching or babysitting devices.

Recent research shows an alarming increase in the amount of time children are watching TV and DVD’s, mainly due to the fact that many families now consider it perfectly normal to have the TV on all the time. The average time spent actually watching for children under 3 was one and a half to two hours each day. That is quite a lot considering the amount of time they sleep, and the amount of time they are awake! An average day may start at 6 and end at 7 or 8 with a 2 hour nap, so in that period they could be spending up to 20% or more of their time in front of a screen.

Researchers also found that screen time is habit forming – it becomes the head to ‘activity’ of choice, rather than playing with toys, or outside in the garden, particularly if there is a TV in the child’s bedroom. There is a possible link here also to the development of anti-social behaviour, the inability to make friends, communication and emotional problems, and obesity in children, but opinion is divided in some areas.

So as parents we need to be really careful in what we allow when our children are small, to avoid problems later. Tough when parents too are fairly addicted to their phone, tablet or TV!

So in our data-infused world here are 5 important things to remember when you have young children in the house:

1. Turn off the TV! Simple but it has to be said. Even if the programming is totally child-friendly having it on in the back ground is extremely distracting, not only for you but for your child. Research monitored interactions between parents and their children when the game of Family Fortunes was on, and when it wasn’t had an irrefutable outcome. Guess when the interactions were best (for both sides!)

2. Don’t believe the hype! There are websites out there that reel you in with the promise of ‘educating’ your child. The only time a child learns from a screen product is when they have a sensitive (parent, carer, older sibling) co-watcher, who can point things out, reinforce new vocabulary, and also take the experience seen on screen into another arena. For example, after watching a nature programme about squirrels, spotting them in the park and talking about what you learned about them from the programme. It is bridging the gap between an abstract experience and real life experience.

3. Remember that children learn best from real experiences. If they watch a game on the TV or computer you cannot expect them to remember the rules of that game as well as if they had actually played it themselves – that goes for me too!

4. We will use media as a babysitter – that is understood! So when you do make sure programming is age-appropriate and reflects your children’s every day learning and experiences. That can be difficult when you have 3 children of very different ages in the house, but since we usually have more than one screen medium it is probably easier to sort out these days than it was say 10 years ago.

5. No screen time before bed – so no screens in bedrooms. Why? Well, the bluish light emitted from screens is apparently stimulating, mimicking day light, and it interferes with our sleep rhythm. So TV’s, laptops, phones and tablets should ideally be switched off, or left in another room. That might be an idea for adults to think about too!

It is important that as parents and carers we are mindful of what our children are going to experience in this world, and that also includes technology in all its forms. However, we also have to remember that small children simply do not possess the skill set of experience and understanding that adults have, to take abstract pictures and ideas from 2D screen media and place them correctly into the real 3D world.

So, set limits on the time your children use screen-based media, but don’t be draconian. Consider what the rest of their day is being used for: meals, shopping, helping out in the house, playing with siblings, mum, dad, going to nursery, and then think about how much of that day can possibly be used for something on the computer, TV or tablet, or not. It is quite understandable that when the weather is rubbish outside, you will probably have a day when more time than you would ideally like is being spent by your children interacting with digital media or watching the TV, but actually that’s OK, so long as you and they understand that at other times that will not be happening.

At the end of the day, your children learn much more quickly and with greater understanding from real life, age-appropriate experiences than from reading about something in a book, or watching a YouTube clip! Even better if you are there too, to remind them about it later!

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Home made fingerpaint - the cheaper option to shop bought

A great way to keep the children amused during the holidays, and older children can help make it with you. I use a standard cooking cup size of 250ml. You will need several small pots that can be covered, as this finger paint will keep in the fridge for a week or so.

Ingredients: ½ cup )125ml) corn flour or cornstarch (maizena in Norway) 2 cups (500ml) cold water 2 tablespoons (30ml) sugar Food colouring Small pots that can be covered to store the finger paint in.

Mix the corn flour and sugar together, add the cold water gradually and mix to a smooth paste.  Cook over a medium heat until the mixture boils, thickens and becomes almost clear. Remove from the heat and let it cool slightly. Divide into several pots or jars and different food colourings to each pot depending on what you want!

This is a thick finger paint that works well on heavy paper and card, or windows and bath tiles! If you want it to be thinner just add more water as the mixture boils to get the desired thickness (don’t forget you will be adding a little more liquid with your food colourings, but it won’t be much, just half a teaspoon or so).

The sugar helps act as a preservative.

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Social and emotional learning is key to academic success

OK it is official - pre-schools and kindergartens should be focussing more on helping children develop their social-emotional skills, such as sharing, empathy, making friends, motivation and self-control, than academic skills. This is the conclusion of a longitudinal study, begun in 1991 when researchers asked teachers to rate the prosocial skills of their kindergarten students. The researchers then followed up 19 years later when the children were 25 years old to see how successful they were.

The results of this comprehensive 20-year examination of 800 children from kindergarten through their mid-20s were recently published in the American Journal of Public Health, (link to actual study: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302630).

Children who were helpful and shared in kindergarten were more likely to have graduated from college and have a full-time job at age 25. The children who had problems resolving conflicts, sharing, cooperating and listening as kindergarteners were less likely to have finished high school and college, and were more likely to have substance abuse problems and run-ins with the law.

The study concluded that it would be useful to develop a way of measuring or evaluating social-emotional skills in kindergarten, as this may be useful for assessing whether children are at risk for deficits in non-cognitive skills such as emotional empathy and the ability to self-regulate emotions and feelings later in life.

According to Kristin Schubert, programme director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the research these findings are “huge” when it comes to thinking about how your ‘brain health’ in childhood impacts a person’s overall health throughout their entire life. “It’s like a paradigm shift around what it means to be mentally well at an early age and how that dictates how life goes for you later on,” she said.

This news isn’t new though. If you read Sue Gerhard’s book 'Why love matters’, she writes about the same thing - that young children who experience a lack of emotional warmth and security are prone to grow up suffering mental health problems, such as depression, or will find it difficult to build a relationship or hold down a job. It is great that this has been shown to be true, it is no longer a hypothesis or nimby attempt to explain why some children develop anti-social, criminal and addictive behaviour, and others don’t.

It really is critical for our children to learn about and understand emotions. How to deal with them. How to talk about them. How to understand that it isn’t just them who might feel that way, but others will too.

In the study teachers evaluated the children based on factors such as whether they listened to others, shared materials, resolved problems with their peers and were helpful. Each student was then given an overall score to rate their positive skills and behaviour, with zero representing the lowest level and four for students who demonstrated the highest level of social skills and behaviour.

Researchers then analysed what happened to the children in young adulthood, taking a look at whether they completed high school and college and held a full-time job, and whether they had any criminal justice, substance abuse or mental problems.

For every one-point increase in a child’s social competency score in kindergarten, they were twice as likely to obtain a college degree, and 46% more likely to have a full-time job by age 25. For every one-point decrease in a child’s social skill score in kindergarten, he or she had a 67% higher chance of having been arrested in early adulthood, a 52% higher rate of binge drinking and an 82% higher chance of being in or on a waiting list for public housing.

The researchers were astonished to find such a strong correlation between socio-emotional skills in kindergarten and a child’s long-term well-being, even with other variables factored out, such as a family’s socioeconomic status and the child’s academic ability.

The funny thing is that every parent I have ever met intuitively knows that teaching their child to share, play with others and take turns is hugely important to their child’s development as a well-rounded and capable individual. Just as important too, is learning how to cope with our emotions and feelings.The great thing, of course, is that this can all be taught and learned, and considering this study it would appear that the earlier we start, the better.

A good pre-school or kindergarten will have teachers and teaching staff who understand this, and have programmes and activities in place that will facilitate the social and emotional side of your child’s development. What does that mean exactly? Well, it means the children will be able pick and choose from a variety of activities such as:

Role play - where do children first learn about social behaviour? At home! So, in order to keep that known understanding of how to behave going every early years classroom should have a home corner or other role play area, where the children can play 'families’. Acting out social situations they know and understand.

Art area. Painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, etc. should all be available at some point during each term. I have often sent a child who has problems controlling their anger to the easel and asked them to make a painting, or tear tissue paper up for a collage. Colours are emotions. Children need the space and opportunity to explore and express their feelings in as many different and positive ways as possible.

Book corner. A place where children can sit comfortably and look at books together or with an adult.

Construction area. A place where groups of children can play together constructing with wooden blocks, lego, playmobil, even cardboard tubes and boxes, whatever resource is available. This area should also have extra resources such as small cars, people and animals so children can create scenes, or make up stories. This area is hugely important as a resource for children to develop negotiating, turn-taking and sharing skills.

Water, sand, or other sensory play. This is an area where children begin to understand the qualities of a substance - early science if you will. Soap bubbles in water, dry sand versus wet sand, earth and sand, cornflour and water, ice. The parameters, under the guidance of a wise teacher are endless! This area is a great place to nurture those children who have problems controlling their emotions. Pounding sand into a shape to turn out, whisking a hand whisk hard to make lots of bubbles, pouring water over the water wheel as fast as you can to keep it spinning - do you see what I mean?

What you should not be seeing are handwriting work sheets or maths worksheets, or 20 identical winter snowman pictures created with ready cut out shapes so they all look the same. Or a weekly routine that has literacy one morning or maths on another. These subjects should be 'taught’ continuously through play and play like activities, tailored to each child’s personal achievements in that area and not just on one particular day. For many children, particularly boys or the youngest children in the class, worksheets are a recipe for destroying any kind of self-confidence they might have had with writing or maths, as they have yet to develop the fine motor skills necessary to join the small dots or scribe a number.

All this has far-reaching’ implications for educationalists and pre-school programmes everywhere. The most important one being that developing and strengthening social and emotional skills is just as important as developing cognitive skills. Academic achievement is only one part of what we should be looking for in a successful student, although traditionally academic achievement is what schools are obliged to focus on through various tests and exams.

This study shows that emotional intelligence has possibly the greatest correlation to school readiness and life success than academic ability and that’s what we should be focussing on in our youngest students and pre-schoolers.

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Play is the child’s work

As Jean Piaget (1896-1980) famously said ‘play is the child’s work’. He was one of our most influential researchers and theorists on early child development, and influenced the work of many others. Not all of his theories have held true - most notably children have been found to be more competent in their understanding of space and time than he believed, but that phrase - ‘play is the child’s work’ is as true today as it was when he first wrote it.

Article 31 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child enshrines the right of children to relax and play and take part in varied cultural, artistic and other recreational activities.

Education is therefore so much more than learning our ABC’s and 123’s – check out my recent post on Social and Emotional learning is Key to Academic Success and the research conducted and published here -http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302630. So why, when we know so much about the way in which children learn and develop do we still as early educationalists have to ‘fight’ to allow play based learning to prevail in our ‘classrooms’. Or indeed, see teachers who are not qualified early year’s teachers teaching the lower grades, and failing dismally to understand the different approach required.

I put classroom in inverted commas, because I think we need to find a different name for the environments in which our youngest students spend their days – any suggestions welcomed! Classroom invokes for me a feeling of controlled and graded learning that is teacher led, with little child input. There is a curriculum in place that must be followed come what may, and no diversion from the hallowed path is permitted.

Even sadder, is the reality for many children that once school is finished for the day they still cannot ‘just play’. They are taken to music lessons, sports lessons, gymnastics, ballet, etc. They may have homework, learning spellings for example, or finding pictures of things that start with the letter ‘c’ to take to school. Their precious play time is eroded.

Socially, I think parents are feeling pressured. They receive the conscious message from those who purport to know, i.e. teachers, school heads, councillors, politicians, that academic learning and study is the most important thing in their children’s lives. Play is not considered to be of any importance at all. Only learning is. However, since children learn best through play, then play is extremely important! Confused? I’m not surprised.

Added to this is the perception that many places where children used to naturally play, such as the local park, the street outside the house, the woods, are now no-go areas for children. They are too dangerous, you cannot trust people, bad things can happen. Their play area has become smaller, and is more often than not monitored by caring adults who step in at the smallest sign of danger. How can you learn to mediate an argument, when an adult steps in at the first tousle? How can you work out how to move your body to get on top of the climbing frame if helping hands always give you a push up?

I think we have forgotten really what the word play means. Although when I look in the dictionary it seems the politicians have got there too ‘play: engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than for a serious or practical purpose’ - Oxford English Dictionary. Ooops, no wonder we don’t see it as important!

Michael Wyness in his book Childhood and Society: An Introduction to the Sociology of Childhood (published in 2006 by Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, describes children as an ‘an ever-present but unseen social minority’! They are cared for, looked after and protected, but have little say in what actually is done to or for them. As a group they have hardly any voice, and most of the time get lumped together in other, larger groups, such as families and schools.

Yet, we know, from research conducted over the past 100 years that children are not only willing and active participants in their own learning, but that this takes place best through personal, hands-on interaction (Vygotsky, Piaget, Clarke). Sensory play, dramatic play, constructive play – there are many different kinds, but they all have one common theme in that the child is not passive, is not sat at a desk completing a worksheet, which if they finish they can colour in until the lesson is over, but is engaging with the world around him.

The educational theories behind the pre-schools and kindergardens in the Italian town of Reggio Emillia recognise this. Loris Malaguzzi, one of the founders, speaks about the 100 languages of children. Children are socially aware. They use play in all its forms to re-enact their experiences, whether it is having a new baby in the family, going to the shops and buying food for the evening meal, going to see a grandparent in hospital, taking a pet to the vets, watching the rain drip down the window. All of these experiences have to be relived, reproduced if you like through play, so that children can address their own fears, confusions, problems and challenges. Play is serious work!

We have a responsibility as adults to allow our children the time to play. If we do not allow this their learning will become limited and narrow, confined to teacher led curriculum activities, and minimising the development of social understanding, creativity and alternative ways of thinking. As parents and educationalists we have to listen to our children more and give them the space and time to grow in all areas, not just academically.

[kendrafaye92-blog]

Play is extremely important for children. Every aspect of the child’s development is enhanced through play!

[anime-is-my-lifee]

FMA + Alchemy 

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<33

[hifructosemag]

There’s a secret to looking at Dutch chalk artist Leon Keer’s whimsical largescale drawings on the street. At ground level, one might mistake his puddle of melting gummy bears mourning their friend, ghosts chasing Pacman through a maze, or the excavation of a terracotta army of lego-men for abstract works of art. As in his latest piece created for the Malta Street Art Festival in July, which can only be seen from 10 meters high, you have to be in just the “right” spot.

See more on Hi-Fructose.

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Blackstar only likes the freshest water

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