admin's blog

Ah, Christmas-time. Twinkling lights, the red and white of candy canes, the green of pine trees – and then there are the smells and sounds and textures and tastes of this time of year too, all adding to the experience. So we thought we’d take a quick look at some non-visual ways of experiencing this time of year.

Scents and Tastes of Christmas

You all know we love to share stories. You all know we adore soundscapes, and making the world come alive with noise, in the nicest possible way. And you know we’re just brimming with enthusiasm for our multilingual resources and our multilingual books.

Hands up who likes to be reminded, gently, in a firm but friendly tone, when there’s an important appointment coming up, or when you need to complete your weekly shop, or when it’s time to take the recycling out? Hands up also anyone (ahem!) who sometimes remembers to update their wall calendar but forgets to add the same information to their diary? And hands up anyone (ahem again!) who regularly misplaces their telephone and thinks how nice it would be to have a paper-based reminder of upcoming events.

We know you love communication, education, and teaching. And we know you’re just brimming with ideas. Even if you're the most dedicated educationalist in the world, however, you'll have times when coming up with new ways to keep not only your students but the teaching staff interested and on task in the classroom is an uphill struggle. This can be especially true in SEN and EAL classrooms, including those with a bilingual aspect. And then there are the whole “use appropriate tech” in lessons requirements, which aren't always easy to achieve.

You know we all experience the world through our five main senses, and that everyone experiences it slightly differently, and you’ve almost certainly come across the saying “a picture paints a thousand words”. Did you know, however, that over 50% of the cortex, the surface of our brains, is dedicated to processing the visual signals around us?

There can be a tendency to think of the end of October and the start of November as ever so slightly dreary. The September excitement of going to school for the first time, or going back to school or college to start a new year, has usually worn off a little.

In many countries where the clocks are put back an hour, the nights start “drawing in”, and the weather often starts to turn a little damp and chilly. And it seems to be a long, long way to Christmas….At this time of year, however, there are several major festivals to help to distract us from the weather and the dark.  

Hands up who loves a story! Especially a bedtime story! Whether you love hearing about princes and princesses, heroes and heroines (and yes, ordinary people are heroes and heroines too), traditional, modern or somewhere in between, did you know there is now academic evidence and research to show what a great idea they are? So we're delighted to announce that two of our new bilingual titles for 2019, "Errol's Garden" and "Quiet", will be featuring on the next Bookstart list.

Remember Mungo? He's been having a truly lovely summer, in his home in Bonnie Scotland. This blog post is gratefully received from Gill Aitchison (author of Mungo Makes New Friends). All appropriate permissions have been obtained to use the photographs - thank you very much to the schools concerned. 
 

When we think of “being bilingual” we often think of spoken language – but someone can also be bilingual in, say, their mother tongue and Braille; or their mother tongue and British Sign Language (or American Sign Language); or English and Makaton. And in our modern world we have flexible, supportive technology that can help us, such as the PENfriend family and various apps. Did you ever wonder, however, about the origins of some of the languages used in SEN settings?