Butterfly42

For communities celebrating Christmas the first of December is the time to start counting down to Christmas day, either to contain excitement or to raise it according to your perspective. Schools have always harnessed them for learning through making or using. Where once we constructed them with card and pictures cut from last years Christmas cards , now we have the internet and the opportunity to use it's power and a whole range of Multimedia techniques to provide content for calendars than can be seen by the world. And of course the calendars are not only for children but harnessed by a variety of establishment to share the arts with adults. So below is a selection of calendars I found last year, some available for this year. Woodland's Junior School in Kent has a global audience for their annual calendar which provides Christmas activities, information, web search and teaching ideas making it a focus for the month. Their KS1 offering is bold and bright with repeatable col...

Received an e-mail from 10 Downing Street today.. I'm quite used to digital communications from there as they are also one of my Twitter friends. The message pointed to the government's response to the EYFS petition. Details of Petition: “We recognise the government’s good intentions in its early-years policy-making, but are concerned about the EYFS legislation, which comes into force in England next September. Our concerns focus on the learning and development requirements, as follows: 1. They may harm children’s development 2. They will restrict parents’ freedom of choice in childcare and education 3. Their assessment profile requirements may place an unnecessary bureaucratic burden on those who care for young children 4. Recent evidence suggests that government interventions in education generally may not be driving standards up and may be putting too much pressure on children.” The full response can be read here but two paragraphs to hold on to are: "The EYF...

I like to keep in touch with what's happening in the early years. One of the ways I have of getting a global view is to follow early years blogs. I follow quite a few occasionally leaving messages of encouragement and will share them over the weeks. Here is Little Voices, little Scholars . Little Voices, Little Scholars via kwout " They have had a focus on Speaking and listening, as well as environmental issues. Take a look at the video Apii's Hippo

The National Strategies via kwout The National Strategies have a new front page, still a beta but worth trying out. It’s bright, spacious and colour coded and so far appears to work effectively, one click on the Primary Framework link under the purple Primary banner and it’s straight through to links to the Frameworks and onwards as needed. Really useful is the addition of third party bookmarking tools, delicious etc on many articles.