Michael Rosen's Good Ideas: A Day with #7yroldme
We live in a world surrounded by all the stuff that education is supposed to be about: machines, bodies, languages, cities, votes, mountains, energy, movement, plays, food, liquids, collisions, protests, stones, windows. But the way we've been taught often excludes all sorts of practical ways of finding out about ideas, knowledge and culture – anything from cooking to fixing loo cisterns, from dance to model making, from collecting leaves to playing 'Who am I?'. The great thing is that you really can use everything around you to learn more.
In celebration of Michael Rosen's new book Good Ideas: How to Be Your Child's (and Your Own) Best Teacher, we've imagined what a day with our seven-year-old self might be like; where we'd go, what we'd do and what lessons we'd teach ourselves.
The time has come to go on a little adventure back to our childhood home, in a lovely little village perched on top of a hill surrounded by the Italian Alps.
Look! There’s Gio, our big brother: he’s always good fun, plus he’s five years older which makes him – almost – a proper grown-up (but a really cool one). He’ll happily take a break from his studies and race you on his bike, and perhaps he might even let you borrow a book from his collection (Lesson 1: read as much as you can, now that you have the time). We can sail across the Seven Seas through the pages of his favourite novel, Treasure Island, and then build swords out of tree branches and fight to save our treasure.
We’ll probably get a bit dirty in the process (Lesson 2: never wear your good shoes for a sword fight) and Mum might not be thrilled, but we’ll distract her by shouting that Dad is back home from work. We’ll go and welcome him and try and read the news on his big newspaper, the ink staining our little fingers and the great, confusing world out there making us dizzy and desperate to grow up faster.
And finally, we’ll gather around the table and have dinner together, never quite grateful enough for the wonderful food we’re having, but simply content to be in each other’s company (Lesson 3: never let go of that memory).
Hello, you. I have a daughter just about your age now, isn’t that strange? Will you come on a playdate with us? Nothing grand; just hanging out in our garden. We’d like to show you the bughouse we put in the tree by the back door. You could help us sprinkle poppy seeds, then add the empty heads to our logpile to make more winter homes for the bugs. Maybe you’ll see the squirrel visit his special nut feeder – though he doesn’t come so often at this time of year. We’ll do some bending and some stretching and jumping, to try and touch the sky. If it rains, we’ll raid the art cupboard and maybe build one of the shoebox houses you love to make. You could help my daughter finish off the dragon she’s creating, help her dad count out the scoops of flour for his baking. Or we could show you how to make a paper star. Because you never grow out of loving to make things, you just stop having quite so much time (and having a daughter is an excellent excuse!). And what will you learn from all of this? That home is where it starts and where it ends. You can travel the world – and you will – but if you look hard enough, everything you need is right here.
Just to let you know, your school-report card at age 7 will feature a couple of phrases that will earn a ‘tut-tut’ from your granny. These are: ‘at times, he drifts off into space’ and ‘is prone to day-dreaming’. Oh well, I know the perfect place to drift off into space and day-dream: the back garden.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the neighbours’ back gardens (and eyeball-to-eyeball with the ones across the narrow back lane), we’ll hear snippets of other languages, like the German lady next door who sings while she prunes her roses. We’ll hear passionate arguments between two brothers on who would win a race between a cheetah and a ‘really, really, really, really fast’ motorbike. We’ll lie on the grass and imagine these other lives: how the German lady came to be our neighbour – the trains, boats or planes she took to get here. One day, far beyond the back garden, you’ll meet people from many more places and talk to people with wildly different opinions from your own, but you’ll be able to engage with them. It’s really no different from day-dreaming in the back garden.
There's no greater place to explore than at the beach, so grab your swimsuit. We'll swim in the sea until our hair is salty and our fingers wrinkle. We'll float on our backs in the water like starfish and count the clouds. Then we'll scour the beach for interesting pebbles and shells, which we'll save for decorating notebooks and jewellery boxes back at home. When the air cools, we'll head indoors to read and write stories, transporting ourselves to imaginary worlds populated by fairies and pirates, where gardens are always secret and even the humblest of 50 pence pieces have magical properties. The wisdom of childhood will be exchanged for the lessons of adulthood. You'll teach me how to do cartwheels, the best way to draw castles and all the Spice Girls routines, and I'll tell you that violins are cool, that there's really no reason to be scared of dogs, and that the time will come when your little sister will have lots of really good clothes, so be kind.
I loved nothing more than being in the countryside when I was a child – despite being brought up in the city – and I think if I went back to meet my seven-year-old self, I’d probably like to take off on a long walk together. Pointing out which farm animals we could see on the horizon, chasing the dog to the next tree and then the next one, and stopping to feed a horse some sugar cubes we’d brought with us and kept in our pockets. We’d talk to all the animals that we passed on our way and make a mental note to tell my parents all about each and every one of them when we got home. I was sometimes made to feel a bit silly by my friends for enjoying being on my own and obsessing about nature, but I’d like to reassure my seven-year-old self that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, you don’t get enough time when you are older to do that, so just keep on exploring!
I’d give you a leg up over the high brick wall surrounding our garden and we’d go exploring. We’d name and count all the different types of trees around us and gather the berries nestled within their leaves (never eat the red ones, I’d warn, only strawberries and raspberries, and it’s never a good idea to touch the mushrooms either). We’d keep an eye out for small bugs and animals scurrying around beneath our feet, seeing who could spot them first; our own game of I-Spy. Once out of the woods we’d rush past the castle looming ominously above us in the gathering dusk. I’d tell you about Thomas FitzAnthony, the man who used to live there and how he founded our town in the 13th century, and about the time Oliver Cromwell and his troops attacked. We’d pause for a moment, trying to imagine what it must have been like, and then, on down to the river where we’d set up our fishing rods and make ourselves comfortable in the gathering gloaming, waiting for that first bite. I’d whisper that you should try and be more thankful for what you’ve got – one day you’ll move away from the country to live in a big city and it’s only then that you’ll start to appreciate the clean air, twinkling stars, green fields and silence. You’ll even miss the cows!
This summer, one of the things I loved doing with my four-year-old nephew was taking him on treasure hunts around the huge garden and barn at his parents’ house in the Yorkshire Dales. So, if I were to spend a day with my seven-year-old self, this is how we’d spend it. We’d learn how to read a treasure map, what the clues were, which trees we had to pass and how to make sure the map was the right way up. We’d walk through the fields, trying to make a whistle with the long blades of grass, then through the orchard to check if the apples and pears were ripe yet, and up to the cricket pitch to make sure the grass wasn’t growing too long and that Baby and Sam (the dogs) hadn’t eaten all the tennis balls. We’d then stop and make sure we were on the right track, consult the clues again and there it would be! A giant pirate flag concealing a miniature treasure chest. We’d run up to the house to open the box and find out what we’d uncovered, and spend all afternoon eating the gold chocolate coins and reading the book that we’d found inside. And then we’d go to bed, dream about buried treasure … and do it all again in the morning.
Good Ideas: How to be Your Child's (and Your Own) Best Teacher is published in paperback on 13 August 2015.
Get involved on Twitter! Let us know what you'd tell your seven-year-old self to win a signed copy of the book: @johnmurrays @MichaelRosenYes #7yroldme
