Without being totally fashion-obsessed – in fact I rarely buy clothes to be ‘on trend’ – I do believe in the importance of wearing things that make you feel good, especially for exams and interviews. When I took my finals at university I always put on a pair of high heels and some red lipstick because they made me feel confident! Wearing tracksuit bottoms and an old hoodie makes me feel dozy, and so I’d never wear slouchy things for an exam or assessment. So I was intrigued to read an article by the BBC’s Hannah Richardson on how dressing up and playing make believe games as a young child can help academic results!
The Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education project has been monitoring a group of 3,000 children in order to try and uncover the factors that lead to success at school. According to the research, parents who encourage their children to play make-believe games, learn nursery rhymes, read stories and play with letters and shapes are much more likely to do well at both primary and secondary school.
Another important factor is regular homework. There was a bit of a ‘to do’ recently when the government scrapped homework guidelines, leaving schools to decide how much work they give their pupils to do at home. This study shows that it really is important for children to do some work at home in order to support work done at school.
The study places great emphasis on the role of parents in children’s learning and says, “If parents focus on their children’s learning when they are very young it raises their attainment at Key Stage 2 on average by a whole national curriculum level, which is equivalent to about three years of school.”
So, if you have young children encourage them to play games that stimulate their imagination and make sure you encourage them to do some maths and English activities as well, as it will put them in great stead for the future.

It’s nearly Easter weekend, hurrah! And everyone should be on holiday now, so we hope you’re having a great time. At Enjoy Education we love themed projects, and here’s a great few suggestions for things to do this week…
If you’re keen on arts and crafts, and want to do something with an Easter twist, then grab some eggs, glue, paint, old tights and some tea bags…
See if you can make a winning decorated egg. When I was at primary school we had an egg decorating competition and I once received a special commendation for one entry, which was an egg box converted into a little car with two eggy drivers in the front and ‘eggcelerate’ written across the top of the box. Can you think of an eggy pun and make something delightful?
For something not quite as silly, but just as enjoyable, blow out an egg so that you just have the intact shell. Then wrap some leaves/bits of lace/material around the egg to create a pattern. Put the egg in the toe of an old pair of tights and secure the tights with an elastic band. Cut off the excess material. Now boil the parcel in some very strong tea. After a while take out the egg and allow to cool before peeling off the tights and whatever it was you placed on the egg to create a pattern and the tea should have helped to stain a gorgeous decoration on the egg.
If you’re an arts and crafts fan and a chocolate lover you could decorate a chocolate Easter egg with icing from those little squeezey coloured icing tube that you can buy in the baking sections of supermarkets.

Let us know if you have any other fun eggy projects that you want to share… Have fun!

What a glorious weekend we’ve had! I have been so enjoying admiring all of the gorgeous daffodils that have sprung up all over the place and have also been munching (probably too many) hot cross buns.

If you’re looking for some fun things to do and make over the holidays, here are some suggestions for you…

-Make your own daffodils using green straws, card and yellow crepe paper.

-Make a family of Easter bunnies by cutting rabbit shapes out of card, decorating them with beads, bits of material and sequins.

-You can create delicious Easter nests by melting chocolate, mixing in mashed up shredded wheat cereal and then forming little nests in cupcake cases. Once they’ve set, put in some small chocolate eggs. Yummy!

-Here’s a great hot cross bun recipe adapted from one by the Guardian’s Dan Lepard:

Ingredients: 150ml apple juice at room temperature, 1 7g sachet fast-action yeast, 75g wholemeal flour, 150g double cream, 4 tsp mixed spice, 2 medium eggs, 50g honey, 300g mixed dried fruit, 400g strong white flour, 25g cornflour, 1 tsp salt, Oil for kneading
For the cross: 150g plain flour_50ml sunflower oil_125ml water
For the spice glaze: Half a tsp mixed spice and 25g caster sugar
Mix the cider, yeast and wholemeal flour in a bowl and leave to bubble for 30 minutes. In a saucepan, whisk the cream, spice, egg and honey, put over a low heat and stir until just warm, about blood heat. Pour into the yeast mix and add the dried fruit. In another bowl, stir the flour, cornflour and salt, add the yeast mixture, combine to a soft, sticky dough and leave for 10 minutes.
Lightly oil a worktop, and gently knead the dough for 10 seconds. Return to the bowl, cover and leave somewhere warm for an hour, until risen slightly. Divide into 12 roughly 100g pieces, shape into balls and put on a tray lined with nonstick paper. Cover and leave to rise somewhere warm until almost doubled.
Mix the cross ingredients and spoon into a piping bag with a plain 0.75cm nozzle. Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan-assisted)/425F/gas mark 7, pipe crosses on the buns and bake for 15-18 minutes. Remove and leave until almost cool. Boil the spice, sugar and 25ml water until syrupy, brush over the buns and they’re ready to roll.

-Make some beautiful decorations by boiling an egg and then painting it with jolly patterns.

-Set up an Easter egg hunt for your friends. Make sure you remember how many eggs you’ve hidden though!

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago I found myself walking through the streets of east London, from St Paul’s to the Barbican and then on to Smithfield Market. As well as discovering all sorts of amazing buildings and brilliantly named streets, I chanced upon a London museum I’d never heard of before: the Clockmaker’s Museum. The museum lodges in the Guildhall library and holds an amazing collection of horological instruments. You can find out about extraordinary clocks made in London since 1600 and see watches belonging to many famous historical figures. For more information click here.

This curious discovery led me to wonder about all the other unusual museums that must be tucked away in our wonderful city. Here are a few I’ve found out about that are on my ‘must visit’ list for the next few weeks. If you’re looking for somewhere unusual to go this weekend, why not try out one of the following…

Medical students and aspiring doctors might want to go along to the Royal London Hospital Museum in Whitechapel, where you can see all sorts of early pieces of medical equipment.

They say that the ‘eyes are the windows to the soul’, and at the British Optical Association Museum you can find out all about your peepers, the history of spectacles and even see some eyes belonging to Egyptian mummies!

The Foundling Hospital was supported by many great philanthropic figures such as Handel and Hogarth and it looked after many thousands of abandoned children. Although the original hospital has long been demolished, there’s a museum near the original site, where you can discover stories about London’s abandoned children and see an amazing collection of art and Rococo interiors.

Children and the adults who are young at heart will be delighted and tickled by Pollock’s Toy Museum.

‘Money, money, money, must be funny…’ went the lyrics to the famous ABBA song, and at the Bank of England Museum you can find out all sorts of things about the history of British currency.

The Cuming Museum in Southwark showcases the collection of the Victorian Cuming family, who gathered a fabulous variety of treasures on their travels.

Animal lovers, explorers and historians will adore the Grant Museum of Zoology, which holds hundreds of creatures and specimens, including the skeleton of a Dodo and the corpse of a Tasmanian tiger.

Have you found an exciting and unusual museum or building? Let us know, we’d love to hear from you.

After years of build up, London 2012 is almost here. In a few months’ time the games will begin and the city will be sports crazy. Having never been terribly adept at PE at school my sports knowledge is pretty terrible, but as a resident of this year’s host city, I felt it my duty to find out a bit more about the Olympic sports…

There are 26 different Olympic sports, which are broken down into 39 individual disciplines. There are some famous ones, such as athletics, rowing and swimming, and some more unusual sports such as handball and canoe slalom. Cycling breaks down into four categories: BMX, Mountain bike, road and track, and there are three different types of gymnastics: artistic, rhythmic and trampoline.

The event that sounds most impressive (and exhausting) to me is the Modern Pentathlon. Contestants have to swim, fence, ride, shoot and run! The Modern pentathlon was championed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin (the founder of the games as we know them) and is inspired by a 19th-century legend. According to the story a French cavalry officer had to deliver an important message and in order to do so ended up riding, fencing, shooting, swimming and running (it must have been a very special message!).

One of the more unusual venues this year is the Horse Guards Parade, which will play host to Beach Volleyball. Beach Volleyball began in the 1920s and became an Olympic sport in 1996. Out of the eight gold medals awarded so far for the sport, five have gone to Americans.

Although canoes have been around for hundreds of years, the 200m-canoe sprint race is making its Olympic debut in London this year. The canoe sprint is one of the fastest races and can be over in no more than 30 seconds!

Olympic sports are full of all sorts of jargon. Here are some new words that I’ve discovered…
‘Piaffe’: a trotting movement, performed almost on the spot (to be found in Dressage)
‘Judogi’: A judo uniform
‘Parry’: A defensive move found in fencing.

I was tickled to discover that ‘Taekwondo’ translates into English as ‘the way of foot and fist’. This martial art is all about powerful kicks and punches, so it seems it is a very apt name after all.

The Iranian athlete Hossein Rezazadeh, who lifted a staggering 263.5kg in Athens in 2004, holds the Olympic weightlifting record.

According to the official London2012 website, the organisers are estimating that 2,400 footballs will be used in the Olympic football matches!

If you want to find out more about the Olympics this summer, check out the official website, which is packed with lots of great info.

Hurrah! We love half term! If you’re staying in London this February, there are lots of wonderful things to see and do. Here are a few of our favourite opportunities…

Are you excited about the imminent arrival of the new James Bond film? If you need a bit of 007 in your life before then you can go on a themed Bond Duck tour.

Cadogan Hall is just a hop and a skip away from Enjoy Education HQ and the venue is putting on a special sea-themed family concert.

Celebrate Chinese New Year at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich. They’re putting on lots of fun activities to help you celebrate in style.

Keen swimmers and artists might want to attend an event at Dear Lido where you can decorate swimming caps, make bunting and attend a tea party in Tooting.

Budding musicians have got a great chance to go to workshops led by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at the Barbican.

Celebrate the bicentenary of Dickens’ birth by going to the fantastic Dickens and London exhibition at the Museum of London.

Curious scientists should pop along to the Grant Museum of Zoology to take a peek at some fascinating skeletons and weird and wonderful creatures.

It’s a big year for the monarchy with the Queen’s diamond jubilee and you can find out more about the famous Household Cavalry (the Queen’s official guards) at the Household Cavalry Museum.

Are you a fan of the magical and fantastical? Maybe Balthazar’s Bazaar of the Bizarre is the show for you.

Young adventurers might want to go along to Holland Park where you can go on thrilling scavenger hunts.

Have fun!

It’s the middle of January, the evenings are dark and cold and all the fun of Christmas seems miles away all of a sudden. The Easter holidays and the promise of large quantities of chocolate are there to look forward to, but March also feels a long way away right now. With so little daylight and warmth it can be easy to feel a bit down and lacklustre about things and you might be letting things get on top of you. If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by the stress of academic work, or just a bit gloomy because of the weather, here are a few tips to get you feeling sparkly and in control again.

1. Get some exercise as this will release endorphins and reduce stress.
2. Eat lots of colourful fruit and veg.
3. Tidy your room so that it’s a nicer place to be and you can find things without having to hunt under large piles of clothes.
4. Go and see a musical. There’s nothing like some show tunes and great dance routines to get you feeling chirpy.
5. Catch up with your friends.
6. Go on an adventure. Perhaps you could go to Brighton on the train and walk along the beach…
7. Pay more attention to your breathing and breathe deeper and slower.
8. Try something new like a dance class, new restaurant, or visit a museum you’ve never been to before.
9. Wear really colourful clothes.
10. Smile more (simple but effective).
11. Sort out your school bag and get rid of anything that’s not necessary, mouldy, or too heavy.
12. Go for a stroll along the Southbank.
13. Do your homework on the day that it’s set rather than leaving it until the last minute.
14. Plan some fun things for half term so that you have activities to look forward to.
15. Get creative and paint a picture or knit a scarf.
16. Watch a funny film.
17. Go dancing with some pals.
18. Do something nice for somebody else.
19. Bake a cake and decorate it with edible glitter.
20. Try a new hairstyle.

The next place we’re going to look at in our special Explore London series is Buckingham Palace, which received particular attention in 2011 during the historic event that was the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. ‘Those pictures’ of he happy couple kissing imprinted a gorgeous image of the famous balcony on millions of people’s memory back in April.

Buckingham Palace was originally called ‘Buckingham House’ when it first emerged as a very big townhouse (with three floors and two smaller wings) for the Duke of Buckingham in 1705. George III got his hands on the property in 1761 and gave it to Queen Charlotte. When she lived there it was known as ‘the Queen’s House’. Compared to most palaces Buckingham is relatively new, and two architects called John Nash and Edward Blore transformed it into its current form in the early 1800s.

After much enlargement and sprucing up, Queen Victoria tool up residence at Buckingham Palace in 1837. Victoria and Albert lived in the palace together for many years and their home was a hub of musical entertainment, balls and lavish royal ceremonies. But when Albert died in 1861, Victoria left Buckingham to live at Windsor, Balmoral and Osborne House, where the grief-stricken queen wasn’t as haunted by the memories of her husband.

In 1901 the palace was full of life again when Edward VII and Queen Alexandra moved in. The couple had many rooms redecorated in a new colour scheme of cream and gold and parties, state banquets and concerts occurred there more often than ever before. Since then the palace has been in constant use and is still full of actvity all year round. 450 staff are employed to keep it up and running.

Today, Buckingham Palace is the home of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip as well as the London residence of other members of the royal family such as the Duke of York and the Earl and Countess of Wessex.

Buckingham Palace contains hundreds of rooms, metres and metres of corridors, rich tapestries, incredible works of art, mirrored doors and extraordinarily beautiful pieces of furniture.

Members of the public can visit the palace and have guided tours, so why not go and explore around this amazing palace right in the heart of the capital.

The next place we’re going to explore as part of our special London buildings series is the Palace of Westminster (more commonly known as the Houses of Parliament).

The Houses of Parliament amaze me every time I walk past. The architecture is so extraordinary and steeped in history, I really wish the walls could talk and share some of their incredible stories. Here are a few things that you might like to know about the Houses of Parliament…

The very first palace was built here 900 years ago and English kings and queens lived on the site until a terrible fire burnt down most of the buildings in the early 1500s. Much was rebuilt, but then another fire consumed a great deal of the palace in 1834. After this Charles Barry took on the project of rebuilding the palace yet again. The intricate Gothic designs were so complex that it too thirty years to carry out Barry’s plans.

When Henry VIII lived there he renamed it the Palace of Whitehall.

One of the biggest threats to the Houses of Parliament was Guy Fawkes’ famous Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Thankfully the plot was discovered just in time to save the buildings from being blown up.

‘Big Ben’ is the name of the largest bell inside the clock tower, not actually the real name of the clock itself. There are five bells in total in the belfry.

During the Blitz, the Houses of Parliament were struck on 14 different occasions.

Most of the stone used to build the palace comes from south Yorkshire.

The Houses of Parliament contain 1,100 rooms, 100 staircases and three miles of passageways.

The oldest surviving part of the Palace is Westminster Hall, which was originally built in 1097.

Members of parliament are not allowed to have their hands in their pockets in the chambers.

You can go and have a guided tour around part of the buildings so why not go and take a peek inside next time you’re nearby…

Every time I walk over Waterloo Bridge I get this amazing warm and glowy ‘I love London’ feeling inside. We really do live in an incredible city, which is so full of spectacular delights that we are constantly surrounded by places to go and things to do.

In order to celebrate the capital and give you some ideas for buildings to visit at the weekends, we’re going to have a special London blog series where we explore some of the jewels around us. I thought we could kick off with one of the city’s most iconic buildings: St Paul’s Cathedral.

St Paul’s magnificent dome can be seen from miles around, but until I visited the Cathedral for the very first time just after Christmas I realised how little I knew about this extraordinary building. I’m going to try and inspire you to go along by sharing a bit about what I recently learnt about St Paul’s…

There has been a church dedicated to St Paul on this very site in London since 604 AD, which is pretty astonishing really. Ludgate Hill, where St Paul’s now is and has always been, is the highest point in the City of London, which is one of the reasons why it is a special spot.

Many churches on the site have sadly burnt down. The original church was burnt down in a fire in 962 Ad. The next was built in 962 but that burnt down in 1087. Then the Normans began another church, however this was destroyed in a blaze in 1136. The next church lasted rather a lot longer, but it started to decay in the 16th Century. Eventually Sir Christopher Wren came to the rescue in 1669 and he designed what we now know of as St Paul’s Cathedral.

The current cathedral cost the equivalent of £147 million pounds in today’s money to build.

The famous dome is 365 feet high (each foot represents a day in a year) and until 1962 it was the highest building in London.

The whispering gallery is so called because if you stand on one side of it and whisper, someone can hear it one the other side.

The cathedral has survived the Blitz and managed to escape being too severely damaged, despite being targeted by bombs.

The organ is the third biggest in the UK and has 189 ranks of pipes!

Lots of very famous events have taken place at the Cathedral, including the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebrations and Lord Nelson’s funeral.

St Paul’s contains memorials to lots of amazing people, including: John Donne, Henry Moore, Sir Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Ivor Novello.

St Paul’s magnificence can only really be experienced if you go and take a look yourself. Why not wander over there this weekend and take a look at this splendid cathedral yourself..