Follow the Pied Piper

15/01/2025

How free is free? I think as children begin to grow the lines between a child and adult fade away and they begin to be more included in adult conversations, jokes and situations. Whilst many fear this transition and feel it’s a time they “loose control” I say completely embrace it and come to know the little adult growing in your home.

15/01/2025

27/09/2024

Absolutely love this guy. When it comes to math I need to get me these counting blocks

25/09/2024

Absolutely gorgeous poem

17/08/2024

Screen time : Worries parents more and more, especially as your child gets older, friends which have unrestricted use of phones will be a major influence. How do you protect from screen addiction? The best way is to live a childhood full of other adventures and experiences, don't fixate on the screen time, instead live life full of friendship and games around it. This way, when your kids hit those teen years, even though they take the plunge into the digital world for a while they can always remember a life that was full even without the screens.

25/07/2024

Don't let your child just survive you

28/06/2024

The architecture of happiness : today as I came back from a friend's house who lives in a close knit neighborhood where many kids can freely walk around and play, I stopped to pause at how ridiculous the idea of just going home to an isolated house is. See when towns and cities were invented people had no tvs and there were very few cars on the street, so people would be on the street often and children would play outdoors, but as cars increased people became increasingly more. Isolated. Today's pandemic of loneliness is due to our poor town structure. Imagine instead a city built around the concept of happy neighbor hoods... Where each house block or Condomonium has an inner green area where kids can play and people can chat. What a wonderful world it could be.

23/05/2024

Things I hear at the playground that destroy your children's playtime

" slow down you'll fall"
"you can't walk up the slide use the stairs"
" share! You must share!"
" don't run you'll fall"
" stop running you're sweating too much"
" don't touch that it's dirty"
" don't swing too high"
" slowly down the slide"
" don't roll in the grass!"
" don't climb the tree"
" don't jump from there it's too high!"
" slow down you just ate"
" don't drink so fast"
" this water is too cold for you"
" the sun is too hot"

What I say : Go have fun yea.

19/05/2024

Here I am watching the BFG with the kids this Sunday, we are on an 80s-90s non disney movie exploration. I can't express how much better these movies were, the water-colour background, the slower less hectic animations, the hand drawings, the dialogues. Just gems to see and my kids have loved each one! So far we've seen
An American Tail, All dogs go to heaven, Land before time, Fern Gully, The Wizard of Oz, Who framed Roger Rabbit, The Page master, Thumbelina, Quest for Camelot, chitty chitty bang bang, Ace ventura and many more

05/05/2024

Steps to writing : Before the body can develop fine motor skills it must develop its gross motor skills. Precision in writing is first developed with little hands gripping, with arms climbing, wrestling, throwing and lifting. Posture is developed through core body strength through running, laughing, bouncing and pretend playing.
Only through the fine tuning of gross motor will children be ready to write.

21/04/2024

Writing by hand is so intrinsically human, much like speaking or composing music. Let's not ignore

Handwriting in a Modern World: Why It Matters & What To Do About It by William Van Cleave.

https://dyslexiaandlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/VanCleave_Handwriting-in-the-Modern-World.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2MTw9cTyrEmsGvIaecPLXIG0S-5R0L941lH6ZNP7y8OpfWLP4iCEDliHQ_aem_AarKBen2sxk2vKihzv57P0tr5wq3OLyw_lYS93Y-WPpqiQpFf93NpRnaeFAZwhAtvWEPr-nGWTnNsAi9jPTg6ozX