Parents and guardians of children beginning school next September are encouraged to visit their local library branch to collect a free book bag packed with reading materials and resources designed to help children prepare for starting school.
Between selling our home in Connecticut, finding a place to live in Spain, and figuring out where our sons would enroll in school, I deprioritized my new social life. I assumed we'd naturally meet people once we got here, and we eventually did. But those first few months were lonely. We arrived in August, a month before my sons' school year started, and many locals were still away on summer trips.
Childhood doesn't end the day you turn five, Ruth Lue-Quee said to me on the phone as she shepherded her son to the playground this half term. Playing is what children are born to do. It's innate in them. It is how they learn. The former deputy headteacher's petition to make play-based pedagogy a core part of the key stage 1 (KS1) national curriculum in England has garnered almost the required 100,000 signatures for debate in parliament.