From whatever next, to the final frontier...

I'm in a reflective and thoughtful mood this morning so prepare thine-selves for some self-indulgent pondering,

We are thinking about light and dark, at nursery at the moment and have been reading "Whatever Next", that favourite story about a little bear with a big imagination. I really wanted the children to get an idea of what it means to go into space, to go to the moon, because I very firmly believe that story books are more than entertainment, they are access points to the fantastic, springboards to the incredible.

We watched the footage of the lunar landing and those first steps onto the surface of another world. Nursery were very impressed with the rocket launch, they liked the spaceman "jumping" on the moon and we had a jolly good time imitating him and moving in different ways.

One very aware child asked the question I'd so hoped they would pick up on, and soon other children were asking too. "Why's he moving so slowly?". My answer to questions like this is always the same, "Shall we find out?" like a record stuck on repeat, towards the end of the year astute children have been known to replace these questions altogether with "shall we find out why...?" to which the answer is always, of course, "yes".

We decided that asking myself wasn't a good idea because I, regrettably, haven't been to space so I "don't even know". We looked to the internet to find out who had been in space, who was "the best" on this subject, and 'discovered' (ok, I admit, I lead them towards...) Chris Hadfield.

For those who don't know, Chris Hadfield was aboard the International Space Station (the world's spaceship) from December 2012 to May 2013, he was the first Canadian Commander of the ISS. During his time in Space, Chris regularly communicated with the internet and ran live Q&A sessions with schools. He is an incredibly inspirational person to millions of people across the planet.

Commander Hadfield recorded videos of himself performing every day tasks aboard the ISS, these are the videos we watched at nursery.

The first time that Commander Hadfield let go of his microphone and it just stayed, floating in space, the children's faces lit up. We watched him make a sandwich in space, the ingredients floating around him like magic, we learned how different going to sleep is in space, we saw water forming glassy wobbling bubbles, and watched space haircuts. The children were delighted every time something floated, they laughed watching Chris explain how important exercise and staying strong was, in general, but especially in space! and do the "Hadfield shake".

Though my class are only three, I jumped on this opportunity to promote aspirations and self esteem, and alongside our "five little men" songs, cardboard tube rockets, aliens in underpants, and moonscape counting, I spoke to the children about being an "expert", being so good at something that you were the best, or nearly the best. We talked about how Commander Hadfield knew that not everyone can be an astronaut, even if they really want to be, but that he decided to try his best every day anyway. He came to school every day and tried to be "the best" Chris Hadfield that he could be. He went to university to study something he loved (engineering) then got a job doing something he loved (flying) and tried his best and was happy the entire time, because life isn't measured by the end point, it isn't measured by big shining moments, but by small successes, every day victories.

We looked at photographs of people living their dreams, dancers, artists, singers, chefs, doctors, astronauts. We talked about practising the skills you need and the things you love, a little bit every day and getting better and better. Every day you can be "the best" you that you can be. You don't have to wait until tomorrow, until you are an astronaut or a fireman or prime minister.


Space is something that has always fascinated and inspired me. It motivates me to learn, to explore and to try to always be a pioneer in whatever i'm doing. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but when it's the journey that matters, your destination doesn't hold the same power over your self esteem. I want so much for the children to have that inspiration, I hope that this topic gives them some of it.

After our discussion the children went to choose their activities, some chose to go and explore the light and dark tent, some immediately wanted to practise their writing "I'm going to be clever, I can be best", one went to the "five little men" table and looked for numbers all afternoon, telling me she wanted to be a "spaceman". One even stayed back a moment to tell me that she wanted to be a ballerina and she was going to "dance everyday".

My next step is to make sure the self esteem in my classroom stays high, that my class, when they change their minds to the next impossible dream, as three year olds naturally will, know that with effort, and the right attitude, we might not get everything we want, but we will be the person we want to be, and that is real success.


For Chris' video's click here!

Apps for Baby

I have a five month old niece who is always interested in what I am doing. She was watching me check my ipad so I ran a quick search to see what apps were free and baby safe.

I stumbled across one called "baby photos" by fisher price. I vaguely remember a DVD of babies being a popular thing for babies to watch so downloaded it out of interest. The app is completely free, no in app purchases and very well made. When you fire it up it gives a little security hint to help make sure your tiny tot doesn't accidentally close the app and play on other things. 

I elected to use it with the guided access feature built into all ipads for added safety. 

Straight out of the box, so to speak, the app is essentially a slide show of photographs of babies pulling pleasant faces, accompanied by a twinkly soundtrack and giggling noises. When baby touches, or in this case - lunges at the screen, twinkles and stars appear under baby's hands. 

To say my niece loved this would not do her reaction justice. She was enthralled. She looked carefully at the faces, touched them and chased the resulting twinkles with her fingers. When the game giggled she squealed with delight. She concentrated like this, highly engaged, for several minutes. 

The app asks for permission to access your device's photos, there's no uploading or photo stealing, but what the app can do is use your own photos, so that baby can enjoy a slide show of faces they recognise. 

We didn't get the chance to set this up before bed time but I will definitely be having a go after the engagement and enjoyment this evening. 

Now for the teacher part, if like me you are always interested in what your little one is learning through their play, this is how this app links to "development matters" the govt guidance on learning progression in birth to fives. 

- the app encourages babies to look at faces, teaching eye contact essential for communication and language as well as social skills that underpin problem solving and collaborative learning later.  

- the touch sensitive twinkles demonstrate cause and effect, early science. They also capture baby's interest in the effect of movement that leaves marks, a precursor for writing. 

- the emotion appropriate sounds help consolidate baby's understanding of feelings and interaction as well as helping them to recognise familiar sounds. 

- the simplicity, and lockability, means baby can learn essential independence skills and boost their self confidence by learning and playing with parental guidance, instead of passively watching a screen. 

Not bad for a free little app. 

I had a look at the other fisher price apps, almost all of which are free, and free from in app purchases too. There are some excellent ideas, the high contrast apps look particularly interesting. I've downloaded a few more to try. 

Sesame Street: Will.i.am Sings "What I Am"

This is one of our favourite treat and inspiration songs in nursery.

I love the celebrity sesame street videos. They feature people that children recognise, people that are famous and people who are important in culture. To see these people take the time to sing songs and present information that is designed for very young children is wonderful because it sends a message that all young people need to hear: "you matter".

Sesame Street: Bruno Mars: Don't Give Up

A favourite treat and inspiration song.

I love the celebrity sesame street videos. They feature people that children recognise, people that are famous and people who are important in culture. To see these people take the time to sing songs and present information that is designed for very young children is wonderful because it sends a message that all young people need to hear: "you matter".

Sesame Street: Usher's ABC Song

We use this as a "get up and go" phonics starter. The children love it and are already getting really good at listening to the words and doing the actions.

I love the celebrity sesame street videos. They feature people that children recognise, people that are famous and people who are important in culture. To see these people take the time to sing songs and present information that is designed for very young children is wonderful because it sends a message that all young people need to hear: "you matter".

Sesame Street: Cobie Smulders shows Grover how to be Courteous

Used as a carpet introduction for a circle time and focus of the week towards PSED development. A kind mind is a fine mind!

I love the celebrity sesame street videos. They feature people that children recognise, people that are famous and people who are important in culture. To see these people take the time to sing songs and present information that is designed for very young children is wonderful because it sends a message that all young people need to hear: "you matter".

Sesame Street: Henry Cavill & Elmo teach Respect to the Big Bad Wolf

A discussion starting point for PSED development and skills. A kind mind is a fine mind!

I love the celebrity sesame street videos. They feature people that children recognise, people that are famous and people who are important in culture. To see these people take the time to sing songs and present information that is designed for very young children is wonderful because it sends a message that all young people need to hear: "you matter".

What have we been getting up to this week? and turning apps into assessment tools

It's Eid at the weekend, Eid Mubarak! In order to celebrate Eid and share this happy time with our families, we have been busy making Eid cards. I decided to use a very simple card template at this stage in the year. We painted the palms of our hands gold and bronze, and mixed a beautiful emerald green for the fingers that looked like the beautiful colour you see on the roofs of Mosques. We printed these onto white paper and attached them to rainbow cards reminiscent of the beautiful colourful clothes that people wear to celebrate Eid.

Next week we are having an Eid party so I look forward to seeing the children have a wonderful time in their rainbow colours. It's one of my favourite times of year.

Something else I love about this time of year is the smell of the changing seasons. Although it's now dark when I get up for work (and getting up in the dark does make waking up early a chore!) the smell of the air when I step outside, more than makes up for it. There's a wonderful stillness when it's dawn and being able to be part of that is very calming and beautiful if you take a moment to breathe it in before you begin your busy day.

Nursery decided to go for a walk in the park and as luck would have it we picked the sunniest day of the week. It was still cold and we zipped our coats up (a good job, as it started to rain just as we set off back to school!) and set off together to the park on our first walk of the year. We are lucky to have a nice big park just a few streets away and took a few bags with us to collect some nice Autumny things to use back in the nursery. The iPads really proved their worth as photos and notes could be quickly snapped, ready to upload straight to Tapestry without requiring you to take your eyes off the group. We collected so many conkers, oak branches and beautiful leaves that we were able to make some leaf prints straight away and save some for focused work next week!

I was wary of the leaves turning damp and unpleasant in the plastic bags so have transferred them to a wire basket and strung a garland of the most colourful across the nursery to dry out and bring the Autumn indoors to us.

I love to find new uses for things, and try to think outside the box when it comes to my classroom. The app store told me that the post-it app was app of the week, so I downloaded it, as I usually do, to test it out. This app is AMAZING. It allows you to snap a photo of a group of post-its and reorganise them on your device. Obviously this is incredibly useful for those meetings where you end up with lots of post it's on the wall (surely i'm not the only one where this is seemingly all my meetings?) After clapping my hands in joy, my first thought was to things other than post-its, naturally. It occurred to me to lay out the children's Eid cards on the floor and snap a photo of them from above to see if it would recognise the inside portion of the card as a post-it. It did. Now all those first signatures are stored on my ipad in evernote, which the post-it app neatly allowed me to export the now organised signature-turned-writing samples to, I plan to use this method to collect samples and turn them into class writing sample boards which I can store in evernote as a progress scrapbook, this will give me a massive amount of qualitative data, but add only minutes to my assessment timeframe. Truly amazing.

Fine Art Fridays!

Over the summer I was discussing the EYFS with one of my best friends, whose daughter had just left nursery to move onto reception in the september. My friend is a talented artist, and the value she places on imagination and expressing emotion through artistic media has had a notably positive influence on her little girl.

It got me thinking about the way the EYFS nurtures creativity and imagination, which in my humble opinion is one of it's finest features, but I also thought about the way we study art in school. It may sound odd to say but thinking of my own school experience art was often studied in a very "childish" way. That is to say, it wasn't taken as seriously as the other subjects (Science, I'm talking about Science) Now, I love Science. I took four science subjects at A-level myself and my degree is a Science degree. That said, I don't believe that knowledge, and feeling and progress can, or even should, be split so neatly as they were in the curriculum I studied. Art is a way of expressing your thoughts and ideas, just as writing is. So why are we so concerned about improving a child's verbal or written literacy, and not their creative or kinetic literacy?

One of the ways I hope to counter this in nursery this year is by keeping in my mind the mnemonic "fine art fridays" whereby I aim to talk to the children regularly about art, music, and expression beyond the classroom. To show that this way of expressing your ideas is just as valid and just as worthy of esteem as thoughtful writing.

The first piece we are going to consider is "The Snail" by Matisse. If you aren't familiar with the piece, it's bright, beautiful and simple to create inspired by works for younger children. Matisse captures the essence of the snail without necessarily trying to replicate it's image, we all know what snails look like after all, their appearance doesn't  transmit new knowledge to us, but Matisse's interpretation does give us new information, new learning. It tells us what he thinks is important about the snail, and how he is feeling at that moment. Without words, without handwriting or even holding a pencil, Matisse demonstrates what I feel is an excellent example of what I mean when I say kinetic literacy.

From www.tate.org.uk

Beyond this, "The Snail" is worth (according to my quick google search) about $25 million. I'm keen to show the children that art is about more than making a drawing that looks exactly like something that "is", that creating is worthwhile.

An open letter to my class of academic year 2013/2014

Dear children,

As you turn 4 it will be a while until you read this yourselves, if ever, but I hope there's nothing I can say here that would be new to you...

Two years down...

As this school year comes to an end I've been reflecting on my career (what little there is of it so far). I started teaching in 2012 and July 2014 marks the end of my second year of teaching, the first year of being an independent teacher after completing my NQT year in July 2013.

Continue reading after the jump!