I Regard The City As A Semi-extinct Form. London Is Basically A Nineteenth Century City. And The Habits

We were singing this in choir last night :) I'll miss the performance but am enjoying learning them all the same :)

Just one of the sound recordings I made in Victoria Park

Medicinal plants.... I'm def becoming plant orientated these museum and heritage days

You can read my small blog post about the gathering I went to last night a this link. @funpalaces @cpfunpalace 

A bit of research for delivering learning activities related to the NHM London's exhibition...

One more of The Cloisters just because....

Last week looking at perspective to tie in with the kids learning about castles with their class teacher… love it when I get to do an art lesson as part of being an English native speaker teacher :) (3rd year primary) lesson plan from @accessart.org.uk #inspiredby https://www.instagram.com/p/CaF4lPYMWWU/?utm_medium=tumblr

Crystal Palace Park Community Audio Trail

Welcome to the trail! I hope that you enjoy it. The trail started as a project for my final MA Museums and Galleries in Education coursework. It...

There are now 4 segments to the trail!! Have a listen if you have not before and especially to the new track entitled the 'Palace Site'. Hope you enjoy and there's more to come :) Please feel free to spread the word. It is a voluntary project - All the time and resources have been offered for free :) 

Inclusive Folk

June 2016

Emmie and I loved teaching a workshop entitled: 'Folk Stories' at this conference hosted by the English Folk Dance and Song Society on Friday.

We talked about the different ways we work with folk music and in particular different ways of storytelling to bring meaning and enjoyment to songs and sessions.

Here are some pics of the room before the workshop :) I have to say heavily inspired by the wonderful Joanna Grace...

Me in the World

October 2016

Hello there :)

Testing out writing a bit more regularly about what I do in my tutoring, music and storytelling sessions. I would be interested to hear if any of it is useful to anyone reading this.

So the first activity that I am going to talk about is a one I found through a search of Montessori blogs. It is called a 'Me on the Map' or 'Me in the world' activity. It is an activity I didn't come across when I was Montessori teaching a few years back. However, when searching for activities about the world I really liked the idea of this. An important part of Montessori philosophy for me is the area of cultural education. Montessori was very much dedicated to peace and the activities in this area really develop this through helping children to understand more about the world, their place in it and how everything is connected.

I tried this activity out with two brothers I tutor. The idea is that you have coloured circles of ascending sizes. You start by asking the child to draw a picture of themselves and then their house and gradually progress to their continent and the world.

The youngest started accordng to the plan. He wasn't too keen on drawing his houseso drew the entry gate to his house. We only did about three last week and completed this week because the activity did not captivate him as much as others. The eldest decided that he would do it in his own way and started with a mean looking character who ended up living on the moon. He gave areas of the moon different number codes that got more complex as they went along and really got into it. I had intended that he did it about himself, however, I loved his creativity. Below are the results. And here is a link to the page I found the best for describing this activity and variations:  Here

Bye for now....