Good morning! Hope you had a good week. I took ‘Excellence in Early Years’ up to Scotland for my first official ABC Does conference North of the boarder in Glasgow. I had such a great day with a great bunch of people. I even got my own tin of Hawick mint balls to compare with the tin of Uncle Joe’s that I got when I went to Wigan. I will let you know which one I prefer! I will definitely be back to Scotland! Off to Belfast next week – I will see you there if you are coming… When I first came across Tales Toolkit, I loved the simplicity of it. I have featured on my blog a couple of times and … Read More
We All Have A Story – A Guest Post from Trisha Lee
This weekend I have got a guest post from Trisha Lee who uses ‘helicopter stories’ to promote creativity and story telling. Over to you Trisha… We All Have A Story By Trisha Lee Helicopter Stories is in theory a simple approach, the practitioner sits with the child and scribes their story verbatim. Then the whole class gather to act these stories out. The complexity of this model lies in its child-centred foundations. Based on the work and ethos of Vivian Gussin Paley, Helicopter Stories creates a non-judgemental environment for children to share their narratives, a place where nothing they do is wrong. Used regularly, Storytelling and Story Acting quickly becomes an activity that all children want to engage with, regardless … Read More
Cursive Writing in Reception – A Good Idea?
I am regularly get emails from Reception practitioners saying that they have been told they have to teach cursive writing to their children, even though it is against their better judgement. They usually ask two questions. 1) Would I recommend it? and 2) How do you teach it? My my answers are usually : ‘I wouldn’t’ and ‘don’t’. Or, ask the person who has told you you have to do it. They must have a plan! I appreciate none of the above are actually very helpful, but fundamentally I don’t think that it is developmentally appropriate for Reception children to be cursive writing. Most (not all ) of the teachers that I have worked with who do cursive writing with Reception tell … Read More
Tales Toolkit Update and a Discount Code!
This Saturday I have the great pleasure of sharing a guest blog from Tales Toolkit. If you haven’t come across Tales Toolkit before…I think you are going to love it! Hello, It’s me again, Kate, founder of Tales Toolkit! We love Alistair so much we’re back for another blog and this time we’re making it official and taking up permanent residence in Alistair’s website sidebar. Whoop. Big thank you Alistair for backing and believing in us. Like you, we know that story is a super powerful learning gizmo. So Tales Toolkit provides interactive, child led resources all using easy to remember symbols to represent story structure. Our kits give children the independence to create stories around their interests using anything they … Read More