The Carillon, Canberra Had an impromptu trip to Canberra last week. Although I had originally said no, because I still wasn't in great shape, I dragged myself out of bed at 4.30 a.m. and caught the 6.25 a.m. flight out of Hobart and arrived in Canberra just in time for morning tea on Grandparents' Day. While I was resting on a bench, another grandma doing the same remarked how shocked she was that the children weren't doing more writing exercises and rote learning of tables and so on, as we were doing in Grade 2 (does anyone remember getting pen licences?), and were instead building mini shelters and, in one granddaughter's case, writing about foxes. I tried to explain that many schools now teach through hands-on projects alongside the basics, on the assumption that children learn and remember more by doing and learn to write and research at the same time. In the course of her exposition about the fox, my littlest granddaughter had really come out of her shell too, ha...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people