Today's discussion revolves around the concept of guerrilla learning. Guerrilla learning emphasizes the importance of facilitating learning opportunities for children in a way that is both engaging and unobtrusive. Elizabeth Bowey and Amanda McShane explore ideas that can help children acquire knowledge and skills in playful contexts, so enhancing their retention and enjoyment of the learning process. As the Christmas holidays approach, they suggest various activities that parents can engage in with their children, particularly during the down days between Christmas and New Year. These suggestions include imaginative play, planning family outings, and even baking, all of which can cultivate independence, critical thinking, and creativity in young learners. Ultimately, they advocate for a balanced approach that allows children the freedom to explore and learn without the constant oversight of adults, thereby developing their autonomy and self-direction.

Takeaway messages:

1. Guerrilla learning allows children to learn without realizing they are learning, enhancing retention and enjoyment.
2. Encouraging children to experience moments of boredom is crucial for fostering independent thinking and problem-solving skills.
3. Facilitating imaginative play is essential; providing minimal tools enables children to create and explore their creativity.
4. Engaging children in planning family outings promotes autonomy and decision-making skills, essential for their development.

Welcome to the second episode of our Ackworth Parent Podcast. I am Elizabeth Bowey, I am the Deputy Head Curriculum.

And I am Amanda McShane, Head of Coram House. And we are delighted to have this opportunity to talk to you yet again.

So today we're building on the last session which was about metacognition, so helping your children think about thinking. And we're going to talk as we come up to the Christmas holidays about guerrilla learning. And this is a concept that Amanda brought to me.

So I don't know if you want to explain a little bit more?

So really I think guerrilla learning is about getting children to learn in a really sort of sneaky way.

So children learning without them realising that they're learning and I think it sort of helps it to be really sticky and they have great fun whilst they're doing it.

Yeah, it's a really great way for you to understand where your child is in their journey with understanding and building together...like the basics when they're little in terms of numeracy and words and oracy and all of these things. But then as they get bigger, understanding their levels of independence or confidence with things as well.

So we're going to talk you through some things that you could take away this Christmas holiday to fill in those days that we know can stretch, particularly the ones between Christmas and New Year. And if you're not out and about, here are some things that you could try.

So first of all, I'd like to preface this by saying it's okay for you not to do anything! It's okay for your children to get bored.

And actually it's really important for children to have those moments of boredom because that's when they start to think for themselves, "Oh, perhaps I could do this..." or "I'm going to do some play here...", "I'm going to take myself off reading."

You are not a Blue Peter presenter and you're not expected to be a child's entertainer the whole time. So please let's ditch that parent guilt of 'I'm not doing anything with my child.'! Sometimes they need that time because that's what's going to make them be self-starters. That's what's going to make them be proactive and to be problem-solvers. So let's put that out there straightaway.

In the book the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, he talks about the fact that actually, if you look at a child's world now, they move from adult-centred activity to adult-centred activity to adult-centred activity without that opportunity to be bored and think for themselves.

And also it's that processing, isn't it? When they're going from one activity to another, they never get time to process what they've done so that learning doesn't actually get the opportunity to stick and reinforce.

Yeah, and they're not leading that learning in any meaningful way. They're being told what to do, in the same way, very much so, that we try and avoid doing at school and we give them some autonomy, but that's exactly what school is. So these opportunities that we're going to suggest to you, some of them will be adult-led, but also allow your child to take the lead.

And Amanda, you've got some really lovely ideas about how your child can take the lead.

So there's so much that you can do. Let's not negate the importance of board games, family board games or solitaire, etc. Puzzles...puzzles are so good for reasoning, and for spatial reasoning particularly. So don't forget about those board games, card games, learning to take turns. It's those social skills that are really important as well. And learning how to lose with grace. Children often hate losing. I think some adults hate losing too! But we have to teach children that it's okay to lose, in the same way as we talked last time about it's okay to fail. It's the same sort of thing, isn't it? And losing is part of that learning.

So do play board games with them and encourage siblings to play board games, do play card games, do jigsaw puzzles and other sorts of puzzles to help that thinking and those reasoning skills. And again, they don't know that they're learning. That's the joy of it, isn't it?

And then start to give them options as well or limit the things. So if you've done the board games and you've done the card games, you could actually say to them, what could we do with these things?

And so kind of on our list of things, our prompts, is imaginative play. How can you scaffold imaginative play if your child doesn't have access into it? Give them just a few tools and say, what will we do with them? What can we create? Or what world could you create? Or where could these objects lead us to allow them to have a way into imaginative play?

One of the lovely things that you have spoken to me about, Amanda, is empowering our children to plan for themselves.

Absolutely. And I think between Christmas and new year or weekends, you know, any time of year, you might think 'Oh well, let's have a trip out, let's go somewhere.'. And instead of planning it and saying 'Oh, we're going to do this and this and this', ask your child to plan it.

And this can take various levels, depending on the age of your child, to 'I'd like to go to such and such a museum or gallery or park'. Ask them to think, 'What time do you want to get there? What time should we leave?'.

If you're using public transport, what buses, what trains are you going to get and what times are they? So you're looking at the timings, looking at reading 24 hour clocks, etc.

Think about the cost of it. Give them a budget so that they know, 'Oh well, we're going to spend this much on the entrance fee, we might want to go for lunch.'. 'So where do you want to go for lunch? Is that a long way from the venue? How are you going to get there?'. So planning all of those things. Give them a budget, give them a timescale and you'll be absolutely amazed by what they come up with. But put it over to them and even if you think 'Oh, that's not going to work', do it, because then they'll learn that actually that doesn't work.

And I know as a parent it's cringy watching children make mistakes when you think 'Oh, I could just do it and it'd be so much quicker and better.'. But they've got to learn and they've got to learn by doing so have patience and give them that space.

Definitely. Even down to what should we wear? What's the right sort of things do we need to pack in the bag to take?

And these seem like tiny small decisions that we make instinctively, but if we don't model making those decisions, how will they learn that level of independence that we really want them to have?

Another thing that is nice to try as a family is buying a newspaper and going through all of the kind of games and crosswords and things in the back of the newspaper or picking an article and chatting about it and seeing what different people think about it. Is it ridiculous? Can they believe this is happening?

Allowing them to build an understanding of the world and the way that the world operates and facilitating those conversations about views and opinions and tolerance and all of those really important things in a non-confrontational way because you're reading someone else's article about it in the same way that you could watch documentaries and I really recommend you to get onto ClickView, which you've had details about recently, and see what's on there. There's lots of documentaries, but also lots of educational videos.

My son, because he's in Reception, is doing his Nativity this week, so he's absolutely obsessed with learning about the Bible. And I've been on ClickView in the evenings with him, watching these short videos about the Bible.

There's so many resources on there that you can access to then springboard these conversations to learn about the world.

I think what you say there about children forming opinions is so important.

And this can happen really from very tiny, when you're asking children what do they like or what they don't like, because it's so easy for children to say, 'Oh, I don't like that.'. But as an educator - and as parents, you are educators - as an educator, you say, but why don't you like that?

Don't ever let children just have a blanket, yes, no, I don't like it answer. Always probe that little bit deeper. You know, 'Why don't you like it?', 'What do you think other people might think?', 'Why do you think other people might like it, even though you don't?' So really to develop again, it's that reasoning, isn't it, to develop those skills.

That takes me back to my Y5 lesson yesterday. So if you teach Y5, I took them to see the GCSE exhibition at school. And this is another lovely thing that you could do - there are some amazing museums and galleries within driving distance of here, with brilliant artworks and exhibitions and artifacts to see. And my strong recommendation would be, don't make it a big thing, make it part of the day, go for an hour.

And what I did with the Y5s yesterday is I took them in and I said, 'I need you to find...', or 'I want you to find me one thing you love and one thing you really don't like, but you have to be able to justify why.'. And we delved into descriptive language and we thought about the appropriate language and they had to justify it. And it was amazing. It took the whole lesson, everybody sharing their likes and their dislikes, but really digging into why. And the reasons were so nuanced and sometimes conflicting with what other people in the group felt.

And it was a really powerful learning moment to learn about tolerance and also to think about the way that our views on artworks and artifacts and culture are formed by our experiences. It was really powerful. So I strongly encourage you get out there if you've got time and go together as a family. Wear comfy shoes, have cake, build in a cafe!

Definitely!

And make sure that you go in with something, a conversation, so you don't just brush past all of them...set a target for each room. So it might be, find me something you love, find me the biggest thing, find me the smallest thing, find me the most interesting thing, find me something you think is disgusting. And springboard your conversations with your child from that and then go and do something else. But definitely build in food!

Yeah. But I think also when you're talking, you're encouraging your children to voice their thinking. And we do have children who are a little more reticent to express themselves or a little shy to say what they really think, because they want to know if it's the same as what other people think.

And so by having these conversations, by having open-ended questions, it enables them to develop a little bit more courage and bravery about expressing themselves and being bold in what they think, not what other people think. And after all, we want our children to grow into adults who are bold and able to express themselves. And we want them to be innovators. We want them to push the boundaries. We don't want them just to imitate everybody else. So these are the starting points and they're so crucial, aren't they?

Definitely, those building blocks. And it kind of hurts my soul a little bit as an artist when I watch people in galleries and museums and they just brush past everything. And if you can teach your children now how to enjoy and make the most of these wonderful resources that are so often free, it's a really powerful part of learning for you and them.

We've talked about baking before. I think it's something that both Elizabeth and I enjoy doing. But baking is a really important thing for children to do, not just so that they can be self-sufficient when they get older, but the maths that goes on with that. So the measuring out of quantities, maybe converting from imperial to metric, depending on the recipe, maybe having to double up a recipe or halve a recipe and they're going to eat something delicious at the end of it!

And particularly important for children who might be a little bit on the fussy side of eating, when they've seen how it is made and that they have had a hand in making that, it sometimes opens them a little bit more to trying new things as well. So again, look through the recipe books, think, right, what do we fancy? What could we do? Go shopping, write the shopping list. How much is it going to cost to work all of these things out? There's so much that can be done and with something delicious at the end of it!

Yeah. I took my son to a charity shop. And we were looking through the book section and he chose a recipe book for muffins. And that's also been really powerful because it's his book and he really owns it. And we're basically just working chronologically through all the recipes and rating them. So it's also a really nice thing because you can compare the different ones that we've tried. So, yes, I strongly recommend it. It's a really lovely bonding thing to do.

We were also thinking about things you can do with all that wrapping paper at the end, at the end of Christmas. And rather than bundle it all up straightaway, things that I've done actually with classes in the past is to do make clothes out of newspapers. But, you know, we could do this with wrapping paper and have a little fashion parade, make all sorts of accessories and things.

So, you know, whilst you're busy nursing a food baby from the day before, they could be there with the old wrapping paper, bits of newspaper, Sellotape and creating a fashion show or building towers or cities or whatever. You know, again, it comes down to that imaginative play.

And this week my Y7s and Y8s will have been doing some collage with me, working on some Christmas cards with collage. And so they are primed to be using that wrapping paper to create some beautiful collages. But equally, I would encourage you to look on the internet at different collages. How can you use different papers to create artworks from them? Turn the waste into something really beautiful and meaningful that they can keep, or it's just a temporary artwork. And the same with all the boxes. What can you do with the boxes? What can you build from the boxes? Where does that imaginative play come in? Don't just put them to the side. Even if you collapse them, how do they get rebuilt, repurposed?

And there are some lovely kind of cardboard fixing tools if you've got younger children. But even for older children. Do we let our older children play? Do we encourage them to play enough? And maybe they don't want to and that's fine, but what if we all sat down and played?

Well, invention comes from play, doesn't it? And I think we put so much pressure on learning and academics and books that we do neglect the play, but that is where the creativity comes through.

And competition! If you've never seen Taskmaster, I strongly recommend Taskmaster and setting up your own. You can buy it as a board game, but also save that cardboard, save the wrapping paper, save all the bits and bobs from Christmas and have yourself some Taskmaster games. AI can be a wonderful tool as well for giving you some prompts as to how you can use the equipment that you have for Taskmaster.

I think we have talked for quite long enough. There's loads of ideas in there. We wish you a very, very Merry Christmas. We have loved getting to know your children and it's an absolute pleasure to be working at Ackworth.

Absolutely! So have a very good Christmas with lots of activity, lots of fun and we'll see you in the new year.