26.6.20 Flushed with Pride

Good afternoon everybody as a rather humid week of the School of Daddy comes to an end. Today the children are learning all about sanitation in an activity that is sure to make their whole week. Here Harry is taking notes on stool size, consistency and concentration of gases in order to assess how effective the simple pit latrine is in dealing with waste products and solid residues. Depending on local weather conditions and the prevalence of thunderstorms, we may also be assessing the efficacy of a simple Pour-Flush Latrine later on...

25.6.20 A Grave Mistake

Good afternoon everybody. We do hope you're all staying safe in the heat and of course, here at the School of Daddy, we take Sun Safety very seriously indeed. Due to the extent of the current heat wave we have taken extra precautions to keep our most vulnerable (ginger) children protected from the Sun's dangerous rays. This of course also presents us with an ideal opportunity to measure and catalogue the psychological damage and physical effects that being buried up to the neck can cause, as we investigate popular punishments of the French Foreign Legion as part of a mini History topic we are looking at at the moment.

24.6.20 Morning Dis-Assembly

Good afternoon and I trust everyone is enjoying the sunshine. We thought we'd take the opportunity for some more outdoor learning by taking a closer look at flat-pack furniture...

23.6.20 Razing Standards

Good afternoon everyone and today we have mostly been learning about... demolition!

22.6.20 Testing Times

Good morning one and all and welcome back to another week in the School of Daddy. Now like all good educationalists, we're always on the lookout for the next educational fad... erm I mean trend. In the past children have benefited immensely from such gems as brain gym, shoe-horning plenaries in to lessons, verbal feedback stamps, learning styles and even lollipop sticks. However, a new trend has arrived on the scene from America and it promises to be a very powerful teaching tool indeed. As it Comes from the POTUS himself, it carries so much intellectual weight that it is inconceivable why anyone would even question its efficacy. As with the Covid pandemic, as POTUS rightly states, testing just finds more cases which is a bad thing. A very bad thing. The worst bad thing, I can tell you. The more cases you have, the worse you look so stop testing. This amazing concept is just as true with teaching. I was originally going to assess the children this morning to see how they were progressing - especially with all the worrying reports that children are falling behind because schools have been shut too long. However, if I don't test them then there's no data either way so everything is fine and targets are met. In fact I've decided to take it a step further - to not even teach anything. Instead the children will be fed a diet of the least demanding TV possible. Donald Rumsfeld once famously spoke of known knowns and known unknowns that we know we don't know. Knowing that we don't know anything is far more achievable than the alternative and requires virtually no testing. The future of education has arrived!

21.6.20 New Uniform Order has Arrived!

So if the School of Daddy didn't sound cult-like enough already... we now have matching T shirts! Thanks to my lovely wife for a great Father's Day present (and the kippers and scrambled egg for breakfast and posh roast beef lunch!) - right, off to eat said lunch and watch Dr Who and the Faceless Ones courtesy of the children 😁

19.6.20 We Woodward if we Could...

Good morning everybody. Today in the School of Daddy we are once more turning to the wonderful world of religion to provide us with knowledge and enlightenment, as it always does, and light is particularly important at the moment as we approach the Summer Solstice. If you are to believe those secular cranks that call themselves scientists, it occurs because the axis of the rotation of the Earth is not aligned with the axis of its motion around the Sun and we will experience the longest day and shortest night with the sun reaching its most Northerly declination at 21:43 GMT on Saturday 20th June. Dreary fact at best and heretical nonsense at worst, I'm sure you will agree. Much more interesting are the religious takes on the Solstice where we can take our pick from celebrating the Sun God dying, jumping through bonfires, over consumption of alcohol, fertility rites, burning human sacrifices to the Sun Goddess Saule or crowning the Oak King before he is defeated for another year by the Holly King as the world returns to the Darkness after the Light. Obviously we will have to keep our studies age appropriate and have elected to celebrate the death of God by building our own Wicker Man. Our crops of fruit from the garden have been a little lacklustre over the years so the children have volunteered to be present when we set alight the pyre beneath our effigy. Fingers crossed we get a few more apples and cherries this year although as Lord Summerisle said, "Animals are fine but there acceptability is limited. A small child is even better but not nearly as effective as the right kind of adult".

18.6.20 PSA A-OK

Good afternoon everybody and what a busy day it's been here in the School of Daddy. We've just about managed to squeeze an activity in, in between gathering up materials for tomorrow's Summer Solstice lesson. Inspired by those lovable and deeply scarring Public Information Films from the 70's and 80's, the children have been designing their own public health campaigns to promote the wearing of face masks in public. Using popular films and movies that we all have no doubt enjoyed at tea time with our families, they have created an effective and relatable set of posters that surely can't fail to gently nudge the masses to be that little bit more hygienic. For those of you not familiar with the research material we have used, you can sample a variety of examples from this playlist - https://www.youtube.com/watch…

17.6.20 Hubris - A New Renewable Resource?

Good afternoon everyone. Unfortunately the threat of thunderstorms this morning has put paid to our planned activity on the Summer Solstice for today. Hopefully we will get a chance to share our work on that topic with you by the end of the week. However, they do say every Cumulonimbus has a silver lining and having checked the online real-time lightning map, it seemed that we would be able to get outside for some practical science combined with a little RE after all! In this hastily put together experiment Katie is attempting to anger God(s?) in order to attract lightning to our exact vicinity. As you can see Harry is ready to capture that electrical charge with an improvised lightning rod. The light bulb he has installed in his mouth will hopefully give us a rough idea of the kind of wattage Divine Retribution is capable of... 

16.6.20 I've Come Here to Chew Bubblegum and Write Good Advertising Copy... and I'm All Out Of Bubblegum

Good morning everyone and welcome once more to the School of Daddy. This morning we are doing Literacy and in particular, Persuasive Writing. I must say both I and my family have been incredibly grateful for all the heartwarming advertising our favourite brands have been sharing throughout lockdown. We've certainly not felt this much human love, affection and general goodwill for such things as banks, oven chips, building societies and video conferencing facilities from well known technology giants. As well as enjoying the extremely comforting feeling of having multinational corporate brands caring for us, we also have a large amount of advertising material for the children to analyse and "magpie" the best words and phrases from to use in their own writing! As you can see they've been pretty busy and have created fantastic words and ideas banks already. The only shame really is that we're so busy learning we can't get out to the shops to buy, consume and obey like everyone else.

16.5.20 Dig for Victory

Good morning everyone and welcome back to the School of Daddy. Today we continue with our look back at our "Protect and Survive" Nuclear War and Civil Defence topic. As you can see, work has begun in earnest on the Type 1a Improvised Garden Shelter with the excavation of a trench. We will be removing all the doors in the house to construct the above ground walls and roof and then banking earth up around the whole structure. To address the issue of the inevitable breakdown of law and order and the threat of looters I have declared martial law and drafted the children. Here Katie is practicing the "Stand To" bugle call in case of a dawn or even mid-morning raid. Plans for this and other shelters can be found by following this link for those of you wanting to join in at home - http://www.atomica.co.uk/shelters/main.htm

12.6.20 A Total Whitewash

Good morning everybody and we thought we'd finish another week in the School of Daddy with a practical science investigation. One of the many useful safety precautions we learnt about from the Protect and Survive booklet yesterday was to "coat windows inside with a diluted emulsion paint of a light colour so that they will reflect away much of the heat flash, even if the blast which will follow is to shatter them". Here we see Harry about to apply the paint to our test window while Katie readies our heat projector - a flame thrower improvised from a pressure washer and fuel supply. Obviously we won't be able to reach the temperatures generated by even a 1 megaton bomb - some twenty million degrees at the centre of the fireball (equivalent to the temperature of our sun) and even at 2 miles from the epicentre of the detonation, temperatures reach 4000 degrees C - enough to set trees alight and boil shallow lakes dry. However, Harry has selflessly offered to place himself in the test area, behind the window, and report back to us his estimates of the heat reaching through the protective layer of paint. Should we have sufficient fuel to prepare a small explosive device we will conduct further tests on the resistance of regular clothing to flying glass debris.

11.6.20 Stay Alert, Protect and Survive

Good morning one and all. Today in the School of Daddy we are diving in to some living History as part of our mini-topic on successful Government responses to national emergencies. In the spotlight is the superbly reassuring "Protect and Survive" booklet (published in 1976) that was issued to all households in response to the growing danger and likelihood of an all out nuclear attack from our old Cold War enemies. The children have recreated the suggested inner refuge that was designed to protect you and your family from nuclear fallout in the first few days after an attack - should you have lived through the initial blast of course. As recommended by the booklet, we have used a variety of dense materials that are well known for their shielding effects against radiation - suitcases packed with earth and sand, books and even clothes, among various other things. Toilet facilities have been organised, along with all the other necessities in the guidance and for extra realism, Harry has been bandaged to simulate the critical damage his retinas would have suffered whilst he looked up at the searing detonation as a one megaton weapon airburst at about 3000ft. The children will be staying in role until the water supply in the bath has run out or they succumb to the psychological effects of being the only humans to have potentially but temporarily survived a nuclear holocaust - whichever comes first. For some light relief this afternoon, we will be watching the educational film, Threads. The original booklet can be found here for any of you wishing to join in! 

9.6.20 Keep it Secret. Keep it Safe...

Good morning everybody and today we are tackling a very important subject in today's online world - internet safety. The children were very excited to try out the old experiment of posting a picture on social media and tracking how far and wide it is shared and liked. They were also extremely keen to write their out their own sign rather than using the one I had prepared - always nice to see them taking ownership of their learning! Please like and share their picture to help them with their little experiment - we look forward to seeing how far it gets!

8.6.20 Jackanory

Good afternoon everybody and welcome to another week at the School of Daddy. We though we'd kick off the old Monday blues with a spot of good old story telling. In fact we are, I believe, inventing a new genre of literature! I give you the Pre-Apocalyptic or perhaps even the Apo-Apocalyptic, if you prefer the ancient Greek prefix apo, meaning off or away from - Away from the Apocalypse 😁 The children have been allowed to write the most banal, pleasant and (that most damning of all faint praises) "nice" stories they can come up with - exactly the sort of thing that would have elicited both boredom and ire in equal measures in the poor teachers when faced with a pile of this tripe to mark and assess back in 2019, but now represents a nostalgic retreat in to halcyon days free of pestilence, looting, war and everything else 2020 has to offer.

5.6.20 Oooh Naaasty!

Good Morning everybody and I hope you've all had a good week. I also hope the first week back has gone as smoothly and stress-free as possible for all those who went back to school too! Here at the School of Daddy we are getting ready for the weekend by harking back to an old tea time TV treat. The house and garden have been turned in to dungeons deep and caverns dark with just a few additions of treacherous traps, odious ogres and goulish goblins. Harry has donned his helmet and shouldered his knapsack to take on the role of Dungeoneer. He will be tackling a whole host of puzzles and riddles using problem solving skills and lateral thinking. Logic and guile should see him through but things are looking decidedly dangerous for this intrepid adventurer... Warning Harry - life force energy is fading.... Ooh nasty!

04.6.20 How Long is a Piece of String

Good morning everybody. Today we are both recreating a famous and very influential psychology experiment and hopefully answering the age old question of how long a piece of string is. In 1951 Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to determine whether an individual would conform to a group's decision even if the individual knew it to be incorrect. The test subjects were asked to identify which of two lines printed on a card was the longest. Unbeknownst to them a number of actors were also hired who occasionally chose the incorrect answer deliberately in order to influence them. Over 12 trials it was found that on average almost a third of participants conformed to the incorrect answer while 25% stuck to their guns and never conformed.

Here Katie has been prepped to give the incorrect answer. Harry initially picked the correct answer, albeit with a large degree of confusion. With some light coercion he was encouraged to pick the correct answer. Although we only have a very small sample of test subjects for our experiment, we will be doing a follow up maths lesson in statistics so that we can manipulate and extrapolate the data to give the (in)correct answers we want.

03.6.20 Bridging the Gap

Good morning everyone. The sunshine may have disappeared but it seems there's hope yet for the summer holidays with the fantastic new discovery of air bridges to Portugal! It seems this week is turning in to a DT bonanza here at the School of Daddy as we've decided to investigate this mysterious new phenomenon by testing out the load carrying capacity of our own home made air bridge. Unfortunately we don't have the facilities to see whether or not it allows the passage of virus and other microorganisms so we'll just have to trust the government is following the science on that one.

2.6.20 The Furniture of Tomb-orrow

Good morning everybody to another fine day at the School of Daddy. It's lovely to see the country getting back on its feet as we all get used to the "New Normal" but we were particularly heartened the other day at the way people were flocking to support the flat-pack furniture industry, which was no doubt as hard hit as many others struggling with the effects of the lockdown. The sight of mile long queues to get in to Ikea could not fail to warm the coldest of hearts as our beautiful industrial estates and retail parks spring back in to life. Taking inspiration from this joyous expression of consumerism, we have designed today's lessons around the fantastic products on offer from this retailer and are designing our own flat-pack coffins, amongst other themed furniture. As well as the obvious DT opportunities available, there are cross-curricular links a-plenty to be had from this topic. We'll be including: Maths by looking at nets of shapes, measuring and calculating dimensions and volumes; Literacy by creating an advertising campaign for our products and finally we'll be looking at some more Biology by examining the characteristics that distinguish living things from not-living things.

1.06.20 We All Had a Lovely Summer Half Term Holiday Vicariously

Well good morning everybody and welcome back to the School of Daddy - we do hope you've had a restful and stress free half term holiday and are raring to go! Congratulations to all those Primary schools who have reopened their doors to Reception, Y1 and Y6 completely risk free - but remember, always keep those windows open and always stay alert! Harry and Katie are luckily and understandably overjoyed to be able to continue their wonderful home schooling journey with me as they are too young, too old, too young but not too old.... erm, not in the right year groups to go back. 

As always, we like to start the new half term with a nice ice-breaker activity but again lockdown precluded us from enjoying our favourite activity of sharing what we did over the holidays. Instead we thought we'd look at what other people who were allowed out have done in their holidays and my, my - they have been busy! So busy in fact that we have been able to include the following cross-curricular links: History and Norman castle design; Maths and the various formulae to work out speed, distance and time - fuel consumption as an extension activity; PHSCE - Government and Planning Laws and finally Biology and the structure of the eye. The children just so happen to be due their next eye test too.