The news today is full of the new curriculum due to hit our schools in 2014, my children will be entering years 5,3 and 1 at this point so of course I am interested, especially as they will probably end up being delivered the new senior curriculum currently in the process of being written. It seems as if there is going to be a more victorian flavour to learning as times tables, correct use of apostrophe and phonics take centre stage, in some places this already happens, as do foreign languages. In fact, it has long since been said that children find learning a new language or musical instrument easier than adults and with an increasingly global workplace awaiting them learning a language at an early age can only be a good thing.
I have no real problems with children learning number facts of phonics either but as one of the people interviewed by the news pointed out creativity has to be encouraged as well, it is one thing to teach children their time tables as a set of facts they can manipulate but they also need to be able to apply these facts, understand the learning behind them so they can use them in practical situations. We know that learning has been targeted to levelled tests and these levels and the way schools are tabled is also going to change, it is not clear yet what is going to replace them. One thing I am not clear on is how this is going to help teachers faced with a crowd of children of varied abilities, learning tables by heart may appear to help them but if they can’t apply the learning it is blnak learning, my kids found one of the ‘exercise’ books we used to have to school. It was full of times tables tests, grammar tests and a variety of simple exercises such as putting an apostrophe in the right place, adding full stops and capital letters, as well as leaning how to add and subtract. It had no pictures and few appealing child friendly colours and they immediately labelled it boring and still say things like; ‘What was school like in the olden days?’
Still half term has come and gone in a blur with the jubilee weekend dominating and a variety of family days before the big return. I am now back to writing every day so that I can hopefully get the second novel written by the end of the year. The rain seems to be never ending at the moment and I think we are all hoping that this means we will have a summer in July and August this year. We have been busy celebrating imps 6th birthday and it is now only a couple of months before Hpops turns eight, and it all seems to have gone in the blink of an eye.
Finally a fun thing we manged to complete over the last ten days was Herman the German Friendship cake. Our neighbour gave us a quarter of her to get us started. The idea is you get given the pre-mixed starter dough and then you look after, feed and finally bale the sour dough cake when the time is up. The children loved having their stir every day and adding the various ingredients. The kitchen did smell a little like a brewery for the duration thanks to the process and at time Herman was a little too enthusiastic and tried to escape from his bowl, perhaps he was offended because it was pink.
Eventually the time came to cook Herman, the kids decided what they wanted to add as the ‘sweeteners,’ we had apple, raisin and brown sugar sprinkled over the top. It took a little longer to cook than we expected but the wait was worth it, I had been warned that due to the sour dough some children didn’t like the taste but mine lapped it up and even wanted more! Herman lasted two days before he was all consumed and the things they learned about cooking and mixing in a fun way, as well as eating the proceeds meant everyone was happy at the end of it. We have passed on the three quarters we didn’t cook and I hope that Pixie’s class have a great time with the stirring!
Our next project is hatching our own butterflies, they should be ready to leave their chysalis just before the summer holidays begin! Meanwhile we are having fun watching the caterpillars and working out how much they have grown and guessing when they are going to start the next stage of their life cycle!