“One more thing: can i possibly imagine how i want to nurture my daughter’s learning without discovering first what interests her and makes her tick? We’ll probably come to that next week in #moocmooc as we discuss Papert”

That’s maybe a natural maternal understanding so wouldn’t it also be natural to do the same for our students during their schooling? And yet most of what they do is prescribed. My kids got Montessori preschool at least so there was choice and respect for allowing the child to do an activity they were passionate to do, and then follow up with the others. The children didn’t have to do the same thing at the same time!

I loved your post and your connections to family life made the ideas we’ve been reading about (trying to) more relevant and interesting.

By the way, I’m not sure if you can get it, but I gave my children a book called ‘The musical life of Gustav Mole’ and it came with a cassette – hopefully now CD. There were two books actually, and it was about a mole who plays the violin and practises even when his friends try to entice him to play, and becomes a good violin player. It worked on my second son – he studies music and plays violin. The second story was interesting because it was about Gustav grown up with his own children who refused to practice, so he took them on a trip around the world and they saw and heard music from different cultures. I loved it.