Tag: education
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Making friends at school and cycling in the rain
It’s tough when your kids don’t have any friends at school. That has been the case for Daniel until this year. He was put into the wrong year when we first arrived and was the youngest in his class both in age and maturity. The children were all nice to him but they didn’t view him…
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Repeating a year at school
We got some great news today about Daniel: it looks like they’re going to let him repeat year 5 next year at school. It might seem like a strange thing to be happy about and also a very simple thing to arrange but it really wasn’t. They don’t let children repeat years in Scotland for two…
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School playgrounds
I’ve got myself involved with a group of mums from school to revamp the school playground. It’s currently an asphalt desert with a dearth of nature and things to play on and probably looks much the same as it did in Victorian times when the school was built. I’ve even seen prisons with better playgrounds…
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Apps for kids
Every now and again I’ll let the kids get a paid app each for the iPad. That day is today and it hasn’t turned out so well. Elizabeth ended up in tears because the game she wants does not exist. She wants a Sim city type game where you have to solve maths problems before you…
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How many iPads does a school need?
Contrary to what people might think, I feel that spending lots of money on shiny new iPads for schools is money poorly spent. I don’t deny that iPads are great learning tools – I can attest to that – but they’re very expensive upfront and don’t last all that long before they become obsolete and need replacing.…
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What not to say to a mathematician at a party
Whenever Ben tells a stranger at a party he’s a mathematician the response is usually something like, “I hated maths at school”. It’s a very common response but if you changed the word “maths” to something else it’s also a very odd response. Imagine telling someone you’re a florist and they respond with, “I hate…
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A robin redbreast and more of Elizabeth’s writing
I was out in the garden today and this little robin redbreast came and said hello. Isn’t he cute? There are a quite a few birds around. They, and the sunlight, wake us up at 5:30am 🙂 The little robin was interested in what I was doing because my digging was revealing tasty morsels to…
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Easter, ethics, and Debussy
As usual I fell for all the April Fools’ Day jokes yesterday including the one about Jeremy Clarkson joining the fossil fuel divestment movement. I guess I was just feeling hopeful 🙂 The kids have been asking me lots of questions about Easter that I’m having problems answering like “How does the Easter Bunny travel?” and…
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Voting, blogging, times tables, and Aberdeen
Apparently we can vote here. Amazing. I was under the impression that we couldn’t vote since we don’t have permanent residency but it seems I was wrong. When I arrived back from Barcelona in early January, I caught a taxi home from the airport and the taxi driver was talking to me about voting. I told him…
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The dress, Oliver Sacks, and more writing from Elizabeth
The results of the poll in my last post are, at this point in time, 42.3% for blue, 42.3% for white, and 15.3% for other. In my family, I see blue, both my kids see blue, and Ben sees white. It’s quite funny because the kids are now concerned about Ben’s eye-sight and have been…
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How English should be written
Elizabeth’s teacher must have suggested to the class that they make a card for their mothers for “Valemtine’s” (as Elizabeth pronounces it) Day because she worked very hard yesterday afternoon and this morning creating a card for me. Here’s the result: It says: “Deyr Mum we luv yoo we are gowing to get a flowa…
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Fabricating data
No, this post is not about climate scientists fabricating data to make it look like the earth is warming because they’re not and the earth really is warming. This post is about Daniel’s science homework. He had to perform an experiment which involved observing the difference between evaporation in a sunny spot and evaporation in…
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Sometimes our kids surprise us
Daniel is an unusual child. When he was little he was terrified of small children even, on occasion, to the point of screaming whenever they were around. This made life rather lonely for me at times since most of my friends also had small children. I used to draw story boards of the activities we…
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Volunteering at British schools
I loved everything about the state-funded school my son attended for 6 months when we were in the UK and have written about the experience here. In most respects, I preferred the English school to the New Zealand school he attends now. I say most respects because there was one thing about the English school that was…
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State schooling in the UK
I thought I would write about my experiences with the UK state schooling system now that Daniel has been at school here for a good three months. Note that my experience relates to just one school in the UK which may or may not be representative of others but I think it’s still worth talking…
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Danielisms
Once a week, I spend an hour and a bit helping out in Daniel’s class at school. Daniel likes it, I like it and it helps his teacher who works on a ratio of 1 to 25. It’s also nice for me to see what they’re doing at school so that I can provide the…
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The Auckland Harbour Bridge and computer science in New Zealand
I was driving over the Auckland Harbour bridge last week and thinking, I don’t really trust New Zealand engineering. This is possibly because I got to witness the catastrophic collapse of two New Zealand buildings in Christchurch not long after they’d been deemed safe by engineers. Although it has since transpired that the so-called engineers…
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