Cognitive Development

Put on your socks and then your shoes. Wash your hands after you have been to the bathroom. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th. Doing things in order is important – but it’s not always easy. My children still forget to brush their teeth before putting on their school uniform. Someone gets toothpaste on their jumper […]

Here you are, as a toddler, playing with your toy farm. Too old to put the wooden animals in your mouth and give them a chew; too young for small world play, for giving them personalities and telling a story. You are at the age of experimentation, of trial and error. You are learning about

Following the success of Get Set Five, many people asked if I’d create something for younger children. They loved the idea of a series of regular play-based activities. It’s hard to constantly come up with new things to do. So I created A Year With My Child, for toddlers and young preschoolers. It’s not a

How do you ask questions? And why? During a test, a teacher asks a question to get an answer. They want to know what you know – and if it’s correct.  But there’s a flaw with this kind of questioning – it doesn’t help you to learn. Closed questions lead to short answers and do not promote

When faced with familiar situations, we don’t have to think too hard. We have a mental map, a schema, for how a ball will drop because of hours spent testing this out as children. And we instinctively recoil from spiders. Our ancestors learnt to do that to survive. But what about those situations where we