| Features | |
Tracy Edwards MBE
Yoga For Children
A Good Night's Sleep Essential For Children
| Open Day
12th November 2011
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Welcome to the autumn edition of the Bloo House newsletter.
We hope you all enjoyed the summer break and are fully recharged. For us at Bloo House, this has to be one of our favourite times of the year with such rich colours adorning the trees and the smell of bonfires in the air - it truly is a marvellous time for venturing out.
To start the new academic year, we have some new families at Bloo House, so a warm welcome to The Bowry, Campbell, Goldblatt, Jaffe and Stephens families. Also, we wish a fond farewell to Phoenix Love who has gone on to Claremont Fan Court School and Caspar Talbot who has joined his brother at Eagle House.
We would also like to congratulate Phoenix on being awarded the Edward Parry Award for Endeavour at the end of last term for his continuing achievements. A special mention also goes to Sam Hunt who was awarded a scholarship for his final year at Bloo House.
In addition, we offer a warm welcome to a new member of the Bloo House teaching team. Georgie Pimm has joined us from Liss Primary School; we are thrilled to have her on board.
We are a relatively young school and there is a culture of positive energy and evolution throughout as we continue to strive in providing the very best educational and nurturing environment for our pupils.
 In recognition of this, the school has recently been awarded Gold Status from Best Schools.co.uk for our high standards and a Silver Award from the Woodlands Trust for our commitment to protecting the environment and our work as a Forest School.
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iLearning At Bloo House
 The Apple iPad provided a new dimension in the way users interacted with technology and for the start of the new academic year, iPads have now been introduced at Bloo House.
As part of the school's evolving curriculum, we wanted to evolve our IT teaching in a positive way that was going to enhance the children's learning rather than create a dependence on the technology.
When all the potential functionality of the iPad is added up, its form factor, the iOS, the cameras and the apps, it becomes clear that the iPad is a Personal Learning Studio. It can be a science lab, literacy tool, research station, history archive, language lab, art canvas, music studio and library. It also offers children a new way to interact with IT, rather than being restricted by desktop PCs or whiteboards.
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Tracy Edwards MBE
 Tracy Edwards, renowned yachtswoman, Bloo House at the start of the academic year. She gave a wonderful talk on her adventures and the motivation that propelled her to succeed as one of the most successful sportswomen in recent times.
Tracy won international fame in 1989 as the skipper of the first all female crew to sail around the world in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race. The boat won two legs and came second overall in her class. The best result for a British boat since 1977.
In 1990 Tracy was voted Sportswoman of the Year and an MBE. She was the first woman to achieve acceptance by the British yachting community and paved the way for other women, notably Dawn Riley and Ellen MacArthur.
Following her groundbreaking success with Maiden, Tracy set to consolidate her position as one of the world's top sailors by entering Trophy Jules Verne in 1998 with the Royal SunAlliance boat, again with an all-female crew. This yachting trophy is for the fastest circumnavigation of the world with no stopping and no outside assistance.
Tracy and her crew broke seven world records during their two-year programme. One of these, the Channel Record was the fastest ocean record in the world for three years. She was well on course for the record for more than half of their route, but was thwarted by treacherous seas off the coast of Chile and her mast snapped in two. Tracy and her crew managed to sail the stricken yacht to Chile. It took 16 days to cover some 2000 miles to shore, with no outside assistance.
Tracy retired from round-the-world sailing two years later when pregnant with her daughter Mackenna, and decided to turn her attention to managing sailing projects for her team. In 2001 she acquired Maiden II, the fastest catamaran in the world and she and her team set about breaking records, including the Everest of sailing records, the 24-hour record, and their own Channel record.
Tracy was an inspirational speaker and the school was delighted to support a charity that Tracy is closely involved with, Regenerate, which is located in Roehampton.
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Tony Buzan
Renowned author, Tony Buzan, recently visited Bloo House to learn more about its unique philosophy to education.
Mr Buzan is regarded as the world's leading author on the brain and learning and is the inventor of Mind Maps. Currently, there are over 250 million people using Mind Maps worldwide. In 1994, Mr Buzan was named by Forbes magazine as one of five top international lecturers along with Mikhail Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger and Margaret Thatcher. Tony discovered Bloo House via tweets on the social networking site, Twitter. Having read our blog and looked through the website, he tweeted his thoughts on the school, saying that he believed Bloo House was a model for the future of education. During Mr. Buzan's visit, he met with staff and parents and gave a lesson to the older children in Mind Mapping.
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Yoga For Children
by Moira Clark
The benefits of yoga for children are enormous. Yoga teaches them to join their breath, body and mind; when we can do this we become whole, which is a great feeling. Yoga increases their strength, energy and enhances their health. Also they will think more clearly.
1. Physical Relaxation
2. Breathing
3. Postures
4. Stress reduction
5. Creating space in one's thinking
6. Thinking and Doing
7. Results and Changes
Physical Relaxation - This is expressed through the power of the exercises, the feeling of tingling in the body, the efficiency of the exercises. Children leave these lessons filled with energy and more relaxed mentally .
Breathing - Breathing deeply in and out of the nose brings lots of oxygen into the body. Oxygen is the fuel or life force for our bodies.
Postures - stretching and holding the body in different positions is great exercise for muscles, bones and organs. Postures stimulate blood flow and, as necessary for a strong clean body. When they combine breathing and postures it develops inner harmony. The peaceful feeling that accompanies this union of concentration, breathing and motion creates flow in the body and balance in the mind.
Stress Reduction - Yoga gives a great reduction in stress, especially after a hard day of studying. Pupils can feel the weight fall from their shoulders. During a yoga classes they are able to eliminate pressure.
Creating Space - learning to relax. The more children relax the easier it is to let go of problems, thus creating more space in their minds. Through visualisation, they discover that they can, in choosing what they think about, affect their inner state and their ability to accomplish goals.
Thinking and doing - By creating some mental space, they can find new solutions to their problems. By listening to others in the group they hear different opinions and experience help from new perspectives.
Results and changes - Just by clearing their heads, yoga teaches children to look at situations more coolly and then make conscious decisions instead of simply following their first impulse. The mental relaxation gives young people space in their thinking.
Research - Bringing about awareness. Test results show that a minimum of ten lessons can bring positive changes in the minds of young people. Through the quietness and clarity of yoga and the support of the teacher, children learn to reduce distractions by concentrating on themselves.
All these benefits show themselves in:
Improved behaviour
Better school work and retention of what is learned in lessons
Better relationships with teachers, family and friends
Those who are disruptive become calmer
Those under stress become more out going and communicative.
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Children Need Nine Hours Of Sleep
 A study by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB in Spanish) and Ramón Llull University have researched the relationship between the sleeping habits, hours slept, and academic performance of children aged between six and seven years of age. Experts have found that sleeping less than nine hours, going to bed late and no bedtime routine generally affects children's academic skills.
"Most children sleep less than is recommended for their intellectual development, which is hindered because the lack of sleep cannot be recovered. This is the first Spanish study that proves that losing out on hours of sleep and bad habits affect schoolchildren's academic performance," stated Ramón Cladellas, researcher at the Faculty of Psychology at the UAB.
The study's authors, published in the journal Cultura y Educación, assessed a total of 142 primary schoolchildren (65 girls and 77 boys) from different schools and which did not have any sleep-related pathological changes. Parents were asked to fill out a questionnaire, concerning the children's habits and number of hours slept per night. The experts also assessed a series of academic skills: communicative, methodological, transversal and specific.
"Although the sample of children sleep almost 8 hours, their sleeping habit shows us that 69% return home after 9pm at least three evenings a week or they go to bed after 11pm at least four nights a week. As such, pupils that sleep 8 or 9 hours have a worse performance than those that sleep 9 or 11 hours," the experts pointed out.
"Taking into account the results obtained, we believe that more than 9 hours sleep and a nightly routine favours academic performance," added Cladellas.
Losing out on hours of sleep and bad habits produced negative effects, especially on more generic skills (communicative, methodological and transversal) which are essential for academic performance. However, there is a lesser effect on the specific skills, more related to cognitive aspects, such as memory, learning and motivation, and they are seen to be more altered by irregular sleep patterns.
"To this end, the lacking hours of sleep distorts children's performance in linguistic knowledge, grammar and spelling rules, and key aspects in the organisation and comprehension of texts, to name a few examples. They are basic skills, meaning that if the pupil, due to a lack of sleep, develops problems in this area, it could have a repercussion on all subjects," explained Cladellas.
The authors concluded that maintaining a healthy sleep pattern at this age contributes to positive cognitive development. They suggest that parents attend prevention programmes to become more aware of the matter.
"Nowadays, there is great concern because children are glued to the television, computers, and videogames, but the same importance is not given to them going to bed at the same time every night," concluded Cladellas. |
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Thank you to thank all the Bloo House parents, who have formed a wonderful community of like minded people who share the core philosophies of the school.
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Wishing you all a lovely autumn and next time you are surfing online, check out our blog page for news and articles about the school, family health and child development.
All the best.
The Bloo House Team
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