When you train to be a teacher, they tell you that people learn in different ways.

• Auditory learners – if you can pick up phrases on a foreign holiday by hearing and copying the sounds of ‘Je vous en prie!’ (French: ‘You’re welcome!’) you learn by hearing.
• Visual learners – if, however, you like to see your information, to write it and to read it, visual is your thing.
• Kinesthetic learners – this is about movement and touch.  You can hug someone and learn ‘je t’aime bien!’ (French: ‘I really like you!’). Or you can handle coins and notes and learn percentages and fractions.  Physical space is for you.

Understanding how your children learn is a huge leap forward in enjoying education.

Ten-year-old Jim is a great mimic, sings in tune and remembers all lyrics.  That’s why songs with dates and facts are a great discovery for him.  ‘In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue’.

Twelve-year old Amy is a mathematician, a speller and a neatnik.  She likes lists and columns and writing things out.  So for her, clever comic books are the way forward.  Anything by Marcia Williams makes learning a real pleasure.

For physical learners, drop your toast and you’ve got gravity in action.  If you get steam from your kettle, a glass of water and an icecube, you’ll have a science demo on the three forms of matter (and wet hands). Much more fun than a text book!

What kind of learner are you?

The car is my best learning tool.  What’s yours?

If, like me, you spend the better part of your day in the car picking up and dropping off children, get that Cheryl Cole song OUT of your CD player now and get into some really hilarious and worthwhile listening.

I used to do the school run twice a day for seven years and I swear my children picked up as much in that car time as they did at school.

My sister got me on to ‘Beethoven’s Wig‘, an album that plays you all the biggest classical tunes set to ridiculous lyrics. So, strike up Beethoven’s Fifth in your head. OK? Now, add in these lyrics:

‘Beethoven’s wig! Beethoven’s wig! Beethoven’s wig is very curly and it’s white. Beethoven takes his wig off when he sleeps at night.’

And so it goes on.

My favourite is ‘Moonlight Sonata Beep Beep Beep’ with Beethoven’s greatest piano sonata reworked to tell a story about getting stuck at traffic lights. I wonder what the great man would make of that.  Have a look at this clip. It’s totally absurd BUT my children, without noticing, now hum along to all the most famous bits of classical music.

I am just worried that they think Beethoven wrote the words as well as the music.  See more of this here.

I am real sucker for things that make tough ideas easy for kids to grasp.  If you have a 10-year old and you peer into his science book, you might well find stuff on thermal conductors.  Eeeeuw!  How boring that sounds – I can hardly bear to write it.

Well, if you’ve ever heard Flanders & Swann’s recording called ‘First and Second Law’ you’ll change your tune completely.  Look at this video (image is irrevelant, audio only) and you’ll see what I’m talking about.  Now I am unable to repeat the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics without wanting to snap my fingers, tap my feet and get up and groove around the kitchen.

My children, without even realizing, got into it too, and then completely floored their science teacher by standing up in class and repeating it perfectly, complete with dance moves.

Now they know it for the rest of their lives.

Do you think learning is fun ?

Do you think knowing about stuff feels good?

I really do. And for children, OUT of the classroom can be the MOST fun place to learn new things.

What’s that bright star in the night sky, Mum?  Sirius.  Also known as the Dog Star. Why, Mum? Because it’s in a group of stars called ‘Big Dog’ (canis major).

And off you go.

Behind a desk and with a pencil in your hand, learning can sometimes seem routine and dull to children.  So I try and make my day with children full of new bits and pieces.  Take milk at breakfast for example.

“What’s that word ‘pasteurised’ on the bottle?”

“Oooh, well, that’s named after Louis Pasteur, the super-famous French scientist who spent most of his life staring through a microscope and found out that by heating milk, you can make it safe to drink, get rid of all the nasty bugs that make you ill.”

Clever guy.  He also found the cure for mad-dog disease, rabies so thank you very much, Mr Pasteur.  Take a look around today – there’s a learning curve to everything!

The final straw in my high aspirations for having brilliant children was when my 8-year old daughter told me that the Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo di Caprio. I had to act. I knew they loved watching television – and that’s how I came to the idea of combining this with learning something worthwhile.

I wrote out the life of Leonardo da Vinci, packed the story with true and memorable details (he liked to slice up dead bodies, he made paint out of eggs, he didn’t go to school) and wrapped it into funny, 10-minute film which they watched over and over again.

And that was the start of NowYouKnowAbout, our company that makes short, funny films for children about really famous people.

This is my first blogpost so naturally I want to say hello and tell you that I’ll be writing mostly about my personal enthusiasm – how to make learning stuff fun for children. One sniff of homework, one whiff of compulsory swotting and rote-learning and kids run a mile.

But I’m here to tell you about the myriad ways to learn without realizing, to pick up all kinds of knowledge – the information that adds texture and richness to every life – with a smile on your face. I’m a teacher, a mother and a would-be ‘Mastermind’ candidate and I firmly believe that knowing about things is great.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. We’re all sponges. Soak it up.