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It’s great to think that the scientist Isaac Newton made all his ground-breaking discoveries at a time (1642 – 1727) when there were no hi-tech tools.  Just shows that you don’t need fancy gear to have great ideas.  He worked out that light is made of different colours – as in a rainbow.  How? By shining daylight through a hole in the door and onto his prism.  Your kids can split light up too!  Here’s how:

1.  Put some water in a shallow dish.
2.  Prop up a small mirror in the water at an angle.
3.  Place the dish near a window and position the mirror so that sunlight hits it.

Sumer is icumen in (as the traditional English song circa 1240 put it) and for parents, that no longer means sweating in the fields and the hassle of the harvest as it did back then.  Nowadays it means…..yikes!…children at home, wild and unfettered for 2 months.  Right, I know – at the start you think ‘oh let them lounge, game, chill,  slouch around in the clothes they slept in – in short, r-e-l-a-x’.  But that wears off pretty soon, I’ve found.  And then you start fantastising about sending teenage boys to military academy.  Well, for any parents of children under 10, for whom keeping them out of harm and trouble is a full-time workout, give yourself a guilt-free break and give them a nugget of rich general knowledge but planting them on the sofa for a quick ten-minute watch of our short films about famous people.  Then they can tell YOU all about Galileo, or why Darwin was rubbish at school.  We’ve got colouring pages too for doing at the kitchen table afterwards.  As educational parenting tools go, our films are just the ticket.

The centenary of Alan Turing, the maths brainbox and father of computer science, is coming up on June 23.  It’s always comforting to find that people we regard as super-clever often had a bumpy start at school. In Alan’s case, he didn’t impress his teachers at Sherborne School much.  Not because he wasn’t brilliant at maths – he was.  But more because, back then, education meant the classics – Greek, Latin, history, art, poetry, languages, philosphy etc.  His headmaster wrote in a report to his parents: “He must aim at becoming educated. If he is to be solely a scientific specialist, he is wasting his time.”

How things have changed!  In our modern world, maths and science are key tools in this computer and internet age.

For parents despairing of their children’s school reports, please remember that Darwin had a dreadful school career, that Van Gogh was miserably unpopular, that Galileo was almost kicked out of university and that Leonardo da Vinci didn’t even go to school!  He had to teach himself.

Find out all these cheering titbits in NowYouKnowAbout’s short films for anyone aged 6 – 100 who’s interested in famous people who made their mark.

Tired from a day’s work?  Or a full afternoon surrounded by toddlers? A long commute back home?  All this and more can make evening with small children seem a tough prospect, however much you love them.  I’m no advocate of maxing kids out on screen time – computers, tablets or TV – but if you deserve some me-time, and need it too, why not sit your children down in front of NowYouKnowAbout’s short, funny and educational films about famous people.  They’ll be entertained, they’ll be absorbed; you’ll get a break and – the icing on the cake – those kids will learn something new and useful.

A friend of mine who’s a hard-working mother was delighted to find that, when her son, aged 8, went on a school trip around Westminster Abbey, he told the teacher and the rest of his class that the great discoverer of gravity, Isaac Newton, was buried there.  He’d picked that up watching NowYouKnowAbout Isaac Newton – our ten-minute movie that teaches kids stuff and gives their parents a guilt-free moment to put their feet up.

We all went to school.  We all learnt stuff.  But how did you pick up the kind of knowledge that rounds out all that grammar, maths, science formulae and so on?  If you’re lucky, it was at home – from a book, on TV, or from your mum or dad.  I think the best way to give kids general-knowledge is to show them our educational movies for toddlers, primary-schoolers and under-12s.  Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, Galileo, Christopher Columbus – famous people’s lives encapsulated in a ten-minute movie about what they did, how they did it and why they are famous.

NowYouKnowAbout educational films for children entertain and educate kids and trigger a curiosity that makes learning more a whole lot of fun.

We can all see it everywhere we go.  Restaurants, kitchen table, school classrooms, doctors’ waiting rooms, traffic jams – the screen is the lifesaver for a lot of busy parents but it is also a dearly-loved medium for most kids today.  But guess what?  It’s also a fantastic tool for learning.  Ok maybe an 11-year old playing his older mate’s Call of Duty is not ideal, but with a bit of research, everyone with kids can be screen-clever.  Ok, so you need to nip into the supermarket for some washing powder.  Leave the kids in the car for a moment.  With any tablet (phone, ipad etc) you can download fun games, Sudoku, number quizzes, country capitals, spelling games – for which you can provide a reward as an incentive.  Or download nowyouknowabout apps via iTunes and while you’re choosing between Persil and Ariel, your kids can learn about the life of Isaac Newton or Christopher Columbus in ten little minutes.  And then tell YOU all about them as you drive on your way.

Next, I’ll give you a list of educational films and apps for children that I love!

As I browsed through what happened today in history – that’s my tweet style (follow me on Twitter if you’re interested) I noticed that today in 1940 Winston Churchill gave the first of his epic and inspiring speeches in the House of Commons.  Even reading it now, when we can’t imagine what the threat of standing alone against the Nazi tyranny felt like, his words dig up all kinds of noble and valiant feelings.  So how powerfully they must have come over, via the crackly wireless of 1940, to families up and down the country. And it makes you value the great power of words, of speechmaking, of oratory as a wonderfully powerful tool to encourage and hearten people.

Some great speakers have etched their words into our minds for ever – Jefferson’s Declaration of Human Rights still sounds magnificent: “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And think of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”, JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you…”, Margaret Thatcher’s “The lady’s not for turning” – these great speeches hit their message right into your solar plexus.

So, when your kids sweat and swear their way through English Lit and curse the endless essays they have to write, be encouraged that this is all good stuff to stretch their powers of expression and find new ways to say important things.

They may not end up being wartime prime ministers, but it’s a skill that’ll stay with them their whole life long.

Am I imagining it?  Or are tiger mothers multiplying rapidly? (We know they are reproducing, obviously.)  My parents hardly knew the name of my school and definitely had NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what subjects I did at A-Level.  No interest, I think.  Far too busy doing their own thing.  So how on earth has the landscape changed so drastically?  I’ve got friends who will not tolerate low marks, even if their child is not gifted and not clever.  In with the tutors or ship in the holiday homework and the poor little things spend their free time, noses pressed to the books.  So what happens if you choose not to take the tiger mother route (3 hours piano practice, lots of pushing and tons of extra work)?  Are you letting your children down?  But hang on…if you glance around at your successful friends – and here i mean the traditional concept of success ie good job, big salary.  They weren’t all high flyers at school.  Some of them dropped out of university.  Some of them took ages to find their path.  What’s hard as a parent is having the nerve to let them grow up as the individuals they are.  I’m trying to keep the faith and opt for benign neglect.  But it’s hard not to wobble when you see what the tiger mothers are achieving with their methods.

How to combine two wonderful activities: dog-walking and learning?  If you don’t already, I recommend loading up your iPod with BBC Radio 4 ‘In Our Time’ podcasts. These turn a 45-minute dogwalk into a sparklingly intellectual exercise (both for the body and the mind) as you trudge through the snow/leaves/puddles while mentally sitting at the table with the ultrabig boffins of the academic scene.

So I come back this morning after the daily walk and now I have at least heard of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and am aware of what a bumper big seller it was back in 1563.  And it’s obvious that you don’t even need a dog for this – although you can’t do it without an iPod.  Long bus journeys, trips in the car, waiting to see the doctor, stuck at the airport – it all becomes far more useful and stimulating this way.

Half-term coming up.

A good moment for lounging around which is important, however unpleasant and pointless it seems to us mothers intent on achieving, achieving achieving.

What about just slobbing out?  Most schools pack a lot of stuff into a day and the prospect of not having to get up and do anything must be wonderful to a child.

BUT….how about a good and simple idea for passive learning that will work by osmosis?  Here’s how:

Think of your 5 most favourite paintings of all time, the ones you’d buy if money were no object.

Find them online, download them and print them out.  (A5 size is good)

Stick them on the kitchen wall, right by the table.  Or stick them with sellotape ON the table.

At least 3 times a day, your children will have to sit down and look at these.  And when they don’t notice them anymore, it means they’ve sunk in.

Your job is to make each one into a memorable story.  ‘D’you know who Vincent painted those sunflowers for?  His mate, Gauguin.  He was coming to stay in Vincent’s yellow house and it was like a home-made welcome present. Nice thought, eh?’

My faves are:

The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci

The Kiss by Gustav Kilmt

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli (boys will like this one)

The Fighting Temeraire by JMW Turner

The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio

The Toilet of Venus by Velasquez

My 8-year old  son got muddled and now calls Caravaggio’s great painting of Jesus ‘The Toilet at Emmaus’ – which sounds like a service station on an Italian motorway.

I’ll keep trying.