FW124 October 2018
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IN THIS ISSUE • How thinking skills can equip your child • The benefits of boredom • School open day dates • Half term workshops Issue 124 October 2018 familiesonline.co.uk In this issue... This is our “extra” issue - we decided to bring out an extra magazine in October as this is the time when the search for schools is in full swing. There is lots of useful info for you Education linked to short-sightedness packed in these pages if you trying to make this important The longer a person spends in education the more short-sighted they decision. But of course, there’s lots more. October means are likely to become, according to a recent large scale study. it is nearly time for a break and West London doesn’t Researchers based at the University of Bristol and Cardiff University disappoint. There is so much goning this o half term - conducted a study of 68,000 participants’ education, sight and your little ones will be spoilt for choice. genetic information. The study proves that education is a "causal risk And at the end we bring you a list of the best places in West London to see the fireworks. factor" for short sight (myopia). Enjoy! Cardiff University's Prof Jez Guggenheim, from the school of optome- try and vision sciences, said “Myopia develops mainly during school 2 News & Views 14 Diary Dates years and then tends to stabilise in adulthood.” In some Asian countries like Singapore, South Korea and China, 4 Thinking Skills What’s on in Coping with STRESS 16 where there are intensive education pressures including homework at West London pre-school level, as many as 90% of people are short-sighted by the 6 School Open Day Half Term time they leave school at 18. Half of these children are already listings 19 Workshops myopic by the end of primary school, compared to 10 per cent of 10 School News British children. 20 Classified ads and However, it remains unclear how exactly education impacts a child's 12 The benefits of Party listings eyesight. boredom! One finding was that spending more time outdoors protects children against the development of myopia. Another was, near-work activities Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter such as reading contribute to myobpia, a lthough not to the same Families West Magazine @FamiliesWest extent as lack of time outside. Find more info at: www.bmj.com Reading charity to reach more struggling readers across England than ever before With the new academic year well under way, national reading charity Beanstalk is stepping up its search for volunteers to help reach more children than ever before with its potentially life-changing reading support programmes. Volunteers are needed nationwide to join Beanstalk’s network of trained reading helpers to hel p deliver vital one-to-one support to children aged 3 to 13 who are at risk of falling behind at school without intervention. Beanstalk works to close the gap between struggling readers and their peers by providing trained volunteers who support and encourage children on a one-to-one basis in local early years and primary school settings. The increasing number of schools requesting Beanstalk volunteers and the addition of a new early years programme aimed at tackling the word gap among children aged three-five, means more volunteers are urgently needed in readiness for delivering Beanstalk’s programmes in the coming months. If you think you could make a really meaningful difference as a Beanstalk reading helper or a Story Starter volunteer then please get in touch with them on 0845 450 0301. www. beanstalkcharity.org.uk Lemon Tree and St Matthew’s Montessori schools based in Ealing Broadway offering both full day care (8.00am-6.00pm) and term time (9.15am-3.15am) for children aged from 1.5 years to 5 years old. We offer French, Ballet, Yoga, Drama and PE inclusive of fees. Full and part time sessions available. Qualified and experienced teachers offer a high standard of learning, nurturing and care. Lemon Tree Montessori: 07495 898 760 (Full Day Care) St Matthew’s Montessori: 07856 364153 (Term Time) Website: www.lemontreemontessori.com 2 Families west London October 2018 familiesonline.co.uk News & Views Should you help with homework? When your children settle down to do homework, do you keep close tabs on them and routinely offer to help? Or is your approach more hand’s off? Researchers from Finland have found that although most homework assistance aims at helping the child, one approach is much better at instilling persistence. The study looked at children aged from 8 to 11 years and found that when parents offered opportunities for their child to work independently that the child demonstrated an increased ability to work persistently on his or her school assignments when tested 12 months later. However, when parents provided concrete assistance to their child, the less task-persistent the child’s behaviour later became. This in turn, made parents offer more and more help. “One possible explanation is that when a parent gives a child the opportunity to do homework autonomously, this sends out a message that they believe in their child's skills and capabilities. This, in turn, makes the child believe in him or Mummy MOT herself, and in his or her skills and capabilities,” for Women Leaking, incontinence, tummy gaps and Associate Professor, Jaana Viljaranta from Arabic pelvic pain may be common but they’re the University of Eastern Finland explained. and Children not normal and you don’t have to suffer in Similarly, concrete homework assistance - silence! Whether you gave birth 6 weeks especially if not requested by a child - may Families welcome – or 6 years ago, The Mummy MOT is a send out a message that a parent doesn't Goal Oriented unique postnatal one-stop-assessment believe in their child's ability to do their and treatment programme created by top homework. • Dynamic • Innovative UK women’s health specialist Maria When a parent offers the child an opportunity • Eective • Native Female Elliott. It includes a full body assessment for autonomous working, the child will work per- Teacher (& mother of 3!) and provides bespoke exercises to sistently, which leads to better development of restore your core and pelvic floor, helping skills. If, however, a parent’s homework assis- Call Reem on full postnatal recovery. She is also the tance involves plenty of concrete help, first practitioner in the UK to offer the new the child will work less persistently, oleading t 07956 845 053 PelviPower™ Therapy Chair! poorer development of skills. It painlessly helps to heal your pelvic It is important for parents to take their child’s pain, strengthen your pelvic floor and needs into consideration when offering restore your core, while sitting down and homework assistance. Of course, parents without even taking your clothes off! should offer concrete help when their child With practices in central London, clearly needs it. However, concrete help is not Richmond and Queen’s Tennis Club something that should be made automatically there’s somewhere convenient available in every situation - wherever yo u live. “Only when needed,” Viljaranta said. More information at: More info at: www.sciencedaily.com http://mariaelliottphysiotherapy services.co.uk/ to book appointments: https://maria-elliott- physiotherapy.cliniko. com/bookings#location familiesonline.co.uk October 2018 Families west London 3 How thinking skills can equip your child for the future What jobs will be available to According to Bloom’s hierarchy, my child when the time the least complex (lower order) thinking skills such as recalling comes for them to enter the information form the base of the employment market? It’s a pyramid and the most complex worry for every parent. (higher order) skills, such as Artificial Intelligence will ‘kill creativity, sit at the peak. off’ five million jobs by 2020, according to some of the Put simply, the higher up the more alarmist headlines. pyramid you go, the safer you While AI threatens hundreds are from the rising tide of the of thousands of jobs in the machines. retail and administration sectors, top professions Thinking Schools, at which these such as the law and higher-order skills are taught, can be found all over the world, medicine are also set to be including in Dubai, Lithuania, transformed by the ‘march Norway, New Zealand, Egypt, of the robots.’ Nigeria and Thailand. In Malaysia, the government has So how can we help our looked to introduce the Thinking children to future-proof their Schools model in 10,000 public skills? schools. In the world of education, the speed at which the robots are In Britain, too, there is a new advancing has poured more fuel enthusiasm for schools where on to the debate about the value these skills form the basis of of learning by rote. Are schools, teaching. There is growing under enormous pressure from recognition that Thinking government to deliver ever- Schools drive the type of unique better exam grades, responding thinking skills and intelligent by priming a generation of learning behaviours that we all thinking processes and (www.cog-ignition.com) works students simply to remember, need in an increasingly ultimately to create, understand, directly with families, and use recall and regurgitate facts just technological world. Much of problem-solve and persist with ‘cognitive coaches’ who work as the need for those skills is education has shifted too far tasks rather than merely one-to-one to develop the being usurped by Siri and Alexa? towards pure recall and regurgitate answers. thinking skills, attitudes and Surely, if we want our children to regurgitation of fact.