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Nexus 7 Kids Apps – Our Recommendations

By Mum's the Word on April 15, 2013 in Education, Family, Technology

We’re big fans of Android in this house – Husband loves being able to root his phone and use custom software and I love being able to customise my device to my requirements and the Open ethos of Android lets us tinker to our hearts content. Last Christmas, we decided to buy Sausage a tablet PC and the Nexus 7 was the obvious choice.

She uses it for so many different things, surfing the web, sending emails, using Plex Media Server to connect to the family PC and watch films. Obviously, a big part of tablet use is the apps that are available, so we thought we’d put together a guide to our favourite Nexus 7 apps for kids, to show you what’s available. There are free versions available of some of the paid apps, but I’ve added the paid ones here as I don’t really like Sausage being exposed to adverts all the time.

Toy Story Smash It – £0.65

This is a physics-based game featuring all of your favourite Toy Story characters and is not entirely unlike Angry Birds, in that the aim of the game is to throw balls at the aliens and knock them off of their perch. It’s great for practicing aim and timing and is immersive for adults and kids alike.

Disney Fairies: Lost and Found – £0.65

This app is based on the newest Tinkerbell film, Secret of the Wings and features beautiful graphics and music from the movie. As you move through the levels, you travel around the different areas of Pixie Hollow and the aim is to find as many ‘Lost’ items as you can in as little time as possible, which in turn unlocks new chapters of the story book. The game is great for reflexes and observation and really is beautifully made.

Dr. Seuss Read-Alongs – £1.33 to £3.34

The Dr. Seuss read-along books are a brilliant aid to learning as you have the option to read the book to yourself or have it read aloud, and the read-aloud option highlights each word as it’s spoken, so your child knows what the words look and sound like all at once. There are also interactive parts of each page, so you can tap pictures and the name of the object is read aloud and will appear on-screen. The Lorax is a particular favourite of ours although we’d happily recommend anything by Dr. Seuss.

Wreck it Ralph – £0.65

If you have a child who’s a fan of the Wreck-It Ralph film, they’ll LOVE this game as it’s really close to the content of the movie. You get to choose from three games, Wreck-It Ralph, which is an exact replica of the game in the film and requires you to help Fix-It Felix Jnr fix the building before Ralph wrecks it entirely. Hero’s Duty is a top-down shooter in the vein of Smash TV (if you’re old enough to remember it!), where you have to shoot as many Cybugs as you can whilst moving around the map and Sugar Rush: Sweet Climber is set in Candy Land and requires you to get Ralph as high up in the Candy Tree forest as he can, whilst collecting candy along the way. The whole game is beautifully animated and contains some of the great music from the movie too.

Blackboard – FREE

This one does exactly what it says on the tin – it’s simply a blackboard. It allows you to use your finger as chalk and has been absolutely brilliant for Sausage as she perfects her reading, writing and arithmetic. We use it to write words for her to read to us, giving her words to try and spell, writing sums for her to do and all manner of other things. If you have younger children, it’s also a mess-free way to start mark-making with them. For a free app, it really does have a lot of uses and you’ve got nothing at all to lose by giving it a try!

Nemo’s Reef – FREE

The aim of Nemo’s Reef is to build and maintain the best underwater reef, collecting new species of coral and fish along the way. It’s educational as it teaches kids about marine life and also gives a concept of responsibility as it requires a certain level of attention to maintain what you’ve built. Even aside from the education factor, it’s a lovely little game, very relaxing as the music is ambient and calm and the graphics are really attractive.

Club Penguin Puffle Launch – £0.65

This fast-paced game is amazing for the reflexes as you shoot the Puffles from canon to canon, collecting gold rings long the way and trying to make sure your timing is exactly right, otherwise you’ll end up in the water and out of the game. It’s great for the whole family and totally draws you in. Addictive!

Pou – FREE

I have to admit, I ummed and ahhed about including this game as it’s a bit like Candy Crush in the respect that there are several areas of the game that encourage you to spend money and use paid-for add-ons, which can really pile the pressure onto parents, something that I don’t encourage. And that’s not even factoring in the fact that you’re caring for, well, a POO.

Having said all of that, I actually really like this game. It’s kind of like a modern day Tamagotchi in that the point of the game is to care for Pou with food, entertainment, exercise and sleep and she becomes ill and dirty if you forget about her. There are also some in-app mini games which are really fun and some are even developmentally positive too, so as long as your child’s Google Wallet is password-protected I’d still recommend this app. I must admit, I even sneak a go when Sausage isn’t looking..!

The Croods Movie Storybook – £1.96

We discovered this after going to the cinema to see The Croods and it’s pretty similar to the Dr. Seuss read-alongs. Another great aid to learning to read and some lovely graphics too.

Were’s My Perry? – £0.65

This is another physics-based puzzle game where you have to use water in its different forms (water, ice, steam etc.) to help you solve the puzzle and save Perry the Platypus. It’s a seriously fun game and manages to be educational without the kids even realising it!

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Learning is Fun: Animal Sizes

By Mum's the Word on April 13, 2013 in Closer to Nature, Education, Family

Since Sausage was old enough to hold her own head up, Husband has sat her on his lap at his desk and showed her pictures of animals on the computer. She’s always been fascinated by nature and as she grew we moved her learning on from visual-only stimulation to actually learning facts about animals and the natural world. The internet is an amazing resource and we love nothing more than when Sausage asks us about something and we’re able to sit and learn together using websites we love, such as Wikipedia and the National Geographic site.

One thing that can be quite hard to explain is the actual sizes of different animals. Most kids don’t have a concept of how big things are, so Husband and I started actually measuring things out with Sausage. It’s a fantastic learning opportunity as not only are you quantifying the knowledge you’re passing on about animals, you’re getting them involved with using numbers, tools such as tape measures and best of all, it fires the imagination like nobodies business!

Now that the weather is nicer, we’ve taken the game outdoors and have started marking things out in chalk, so whenever Sausage wants to know how tall or long something is, we mark it out on the patio. However, our patio is only so big, so we’re planning to take our tape measures to the park to measure out some of the larger creatures, like species of dinosaurs and whales!

What you’ll need.

All you need to do this at home is a patio, a tape measure, some chalk and the internet. Encourage your kids to think of different animals to look up, get them involved in measuring them out and drawing the lines. We’ve had hours of fun doing this and it’s free, educational and really fun if you get your imagination involved.

Starting left to right, the smallest line is Sausage’s height, for context. The next line is the wingspan of a golden eagle (Sausage was blown away that a bird could have wings wider than her height, which led to a conversation about other birds that are even bigger). The third line, in blue, is the average length of a bottle-nose dolphin and the longest line is the average length of a large species of crocodile!

This is a great activity for kids and you don’t even necessarily need good weather to play it (though it’s so nice to get some fresh air finally). We often measure the heights of things and I had fun standing on the arm of the sofa with Husband stopping me from falling off, to show Sausage how tall a particular species of pre-historic ape was! You can even get a stepladder involved to show the really tall things, just mind your head on the ceiling!

Another method of quantifying things for them is to weigh all of the members of the family and write them on a piece of paper (I recommend doing it in kilos as most animals weights are in kilos and it’ll save you having to do all of the conversions!). Using the “think of an animal…” starting point, get them to think of a creature, look up their weight and get the kids to work out how many times bigger than them the animal is, or how many times bigger than Mummy or Daddy, or Mummy plus Daddy, etc. It’ll get them exercising their maths skills and get the imaginations going even wilder!

Sunday

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Can Cook, Don’t Cook

By Mum's the Word on February 19, 2013 in Education, Family, Health

Food is something with which I have a complicated relationship but if I were to try and put it in a nutshell for you, it’d go something like this; I eat too much of it and I like all of the wrong things. That’s not to say that I don’t like healthy food, but I have this addiction to junk that probably goes way back into my childhood, when money wasn’t hugely abundant and things like KFC were a real, once-in-a-blue-moon treat. Now, the idea of takeaway still gives me a tiny, illicit spark which is ridiculous because a) I’m a grown up and b) I usually regret eating junk immediately after finishing the meal.

The thing is, I love to cook. I’m not saying I’m very good at it and I’ve probably had more disasters than successes in the kitchen, but for me, there’s nothing more satisfying than making something for my family which is nutritious and prepared with love. But, I do have a few problems in that area. See, while I consider myself a food-lover, I probably have a rather unsophisticated palette, which means that I don’t do much inventive or off-the-cuff cooking as I simply don’t know what goes with what. I lack the confidence to experiment and to be honest, a modest family food budget doesn’t really extend to celeriac-related accidents when I have hungry mouths to feed and a limited time in which to do it. Obviously, Husband cooks dinner too but we both work and it’s only fair that we share the load.

And there’s the other thing; that mother of all bitches – TIME. I now work until 5.30pm, which means on a good traffic day, I roll in between 5.45pm and 6pm. Sausage is on a medication for her asthma that can’t be taken until 2 hours after she’s eaten which means our window for dinner is relatively small if I want my 4-year-old to go to bed at a reasonable hour. This, again, limits me in terms of experimentation.

Despite all of this, something I heard on Food and Drink last night (does anyone else absolutely adore that show?) really resonated with me and that’s that involving kids in their meal preparations can really set them up to have a healthy relationship with food. If there’s one thing that I really don’t want Sausage to inherit from me, it’s my weight and food issues so, really, the crux of all of this is this:

Husband has bought me some beautiful cookery books recently and I plan to use them to learn how to cook with different ingredients and hone my skills in the kitchen, but I need to learn to cook healthy, well-balanced, time-moderate food which Sausage can get involved with and won’t break the bank, for our day-to-day lives.

I’m sticking a linky below. It’s just a one-off thing but if you have any recipes at all that you think fit the bill, I’d love it if you’d leave me the link. I need to make some serious lifestyle changes and if there’s one thing that the last few years has taught me about the blogging community, it’s that you’re a super helpful and supportive bunch.

Thanks.

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Learning Burn Out?

By Mum's the Word on November 6, 2012 in Education, Happiness, Parenting

Now that Sausage has got past the anxieties that made her first few weeks at school difficult for her, she’s taking to it like the proverbial duck dipping his toes in the pond. She’s already on books with words, she has been for a few weeks in fact, and she’s excelling in just about every area. She’s even becoming more physical, something she’s been apprehensive of in the past because she’s not that confident when it comes to climbing or heights. All in all, it’s been a hugely positive experience for her and it seems only to be getting better.

If you read our review of the Jolly Phonics Home Kit, you’ll know that Sausage has also been coming home and wanting to do more learning. She’s given a new reading book once a week by her teacher, but this isn’t fulfilling her thirst for reading so she’s been attempting to read the books from her Dr. Seuss set too. On top of this, she’s been completing the exercise books that come with the Jolly Phonics kit, insisting on Husband and I holding word flashcards up for her to read, asking to practice writing and doing various things on my laptop and her Dad’s PC such as the Jolly Phonics CD-ROM.

Husband and I are both absolutely thrilled that she’s taking such a keen interest in learning and the increase in her confidence has been phenomenal, but we’re also both worried. The thing is, she’s only four and while we’re happy to encourage education it’s difficult to know when to say ‘enough is enough’.

This evening, Sausage was at her exercises until almost 8pm, having already done writing practice and some number work. She’s done a full days school and then probably up to 2 hours of extra work, which is the same amount of work that I was set to do at home each evening at my very academically focussed secondary grammar school. In saying ‘no’, are we limiting her or at risk of alienating her or putting her off? By letting her fill her boots, are we at risk of letting her burn out or lose interest? I just don’t know.

It’s a real noodle-scratcher, this one, and I fear it’s one of those things that we’ll only know by letting it run its course and adapting as we go. Hey, just like pretty much every other aspect of parenting, then, yeah?!

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Paranorman – Why We Loved ‘THAT’ Joke

By Mum's the Word on November 4, 2012 in Education, Family, Parenting, Personal, Politics

Last Monday, despite Sausage being poorly, we all went to the cinema. We’d had the tickets booked for a while and it was meant to be the first of a list of activities we had planned for Half Term. As it turned out, poor Sausage was too ill for anything else all week, but that’s a different post. The film we’d booked to see was Paranorman. We’d seen a trailer for it when we went to see Ice Age 4 and we all thought it looked great so we were excited to finally see it.

The film didn’t disappoint, the animation was brilliant, the storyline mixed humour, sadness, dark undertones and even sneaked a moral message in there about acceptance, appearances and people who are ‘different’. The characters were likeable and it was one of those films that adults could enjoy just as much as the kids. In short, it was a proper fun family film.

One of the sub-plots of the film revolved around Norman’s sister trying to get the attention of another character in the film, Mitch, a hulking great jock who seems oblivious to her advances. She’s a pretty girl (in the way that animated plasticine can be pretty) and you wonder why Mitch is so resilient to her feminine wiles. I assumed he was either too stupid or too into his muscles/sports/van to notice. Then, right at the end, they chuck in a moment of brilliance.

Courtney finally plucks up the courage to ask Mitch out for a date, to which he replies “Sure. My boyfriend loves chick flicks.”

This makes Mitch the first openly gay character in an animated family film. I found a quote from the scriptwriter who said this:

“I wanted it from the start, absolutely. It seemed like the best bookend to that whole tolerance thing and to do it as a joke, a kind of throwaway thing, but something that has NEVER been done before. I think we’re telling a story about intolerance, so you have to be brave about it.”

As far as I can gather, there’s been a lot of backlash about this from parents who think they’ve been tricked into taking their kids to see a film which is forcing some sort of gay agenda onto their children, but quite honestly, this is exactly how we should be approaching the subject. I’ve seen quotes from people saying that they don’t want to have to explain homosexuality to their kids, but hey, guess what, a fucking cartoon just did your job for you, BE GRATEFUL.

As the old clichéd but true phrase goes, kids are like sponges, if we start normalizing things and referring to them in the nonplussed way they have in this film, it will just become a part of consciousness, rather than a big issue. Did you have to explain to your kids why men and women love each other? I doubt it, and if they see references to gay and lesbian couples they won’t question that either, it’ll just be part of ‘The Way Things Are’. And, if you’re one of those people who think that having gay characters in cartoons will turn your kids gay? Please. Go and get sterilised.

It’s not just brilliant that they’ve managed to slip in into the film, it’s that a throwaway comment which took up two seconds of a 90 minute film has challenged people’s perceptions. Mitch is a big, tough, sporty guy, the stereotypical Mr. America. He’s not a flouncing fairy, or struggling to come to terms with his sexuality, he’s not an acerbic bitch, he’s not the smart, cosmopolitan lawyer, or any of the other ‘types’ of gay guys that the media throws at us. He’s just a guy and he’s open and confident about the fact that he fancies other guys. Which, essentially, is what homosexuality is, right?

I think it’s brilliant that we’re finally starting to see some sort of acceptance in the mainstream media. Between this and Marvel Comics writing the first gay wedding into ‘Astonishing X-Men’, these are the strides we need to be making which will improve things for future generations. I want Sausage to grow up into a world where tolerance is not something that’s debated and argued over, but something that’s a foundation of society and if gay cartoon characters is the way to start, then I doff my cap to Laika.

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My Jolly Phonics – A Review

By Mum's the Word on October 21, 2012 in Education, Family, Opinion, Parenting, Review

Sometimes, I get given items to review that are so overwhelmingly brilliant that I don’t even know where to begin with reviewing them and this is the case with the My Jolly Phonics kit, so instead of procrastinating over it for ages and leaving it miles too long, I thought I’d just dive in and see where this takes me!

A Bit of Background

As you probably know, Sausage started school in September, which means learning to read and write. Husband and I have actually been teaching her for ages and she already knew her alphabet and could write certain words, such as her name, so she had a fairly good base-knowledge going on. Before she even started, I knew she’d be using the phonics system to learn and I started to make enquiries, but struggled to find resources that I thought Sausage would find really engaging.

The Kit

Once she got started at school, she came home with songs she’d been singing to learn her letters and a quick Google of “The snake is in the grass, the snake is in the grass…” and I found that the system she was doing was Jolly Phonics. I found their website and discovered that they actually offer a home learning kit to compliment everything the kids are doing at school. The kit includes 7 activity books, a DVD, a CD of songs, a CD-Rom of games for the computer, a story book, a poster and a set of three-sided pencils.

Our Opinion

I really cannot emphasise enough how brilliant this kit is. At a penny shy of £100, you may think it’s a bit pricey but I can unequivocally say that, had I not been sent the kit for review, I would happily have paid that. The songs are absolutely brilliant, all set to tunes that you’ll already know, such as ‘The Farmer’s in the Den’ and ‘Jingle Bells’, and are so catchy that Husband and I find ourselves singing them at random. Sausage and I also walk to and from school singing the songs, which is a fun thing to do whilst being sneakily educational!

We’ve got the poster up in our lounge and just having it there as a focal point helps Sausage to remember her letters, as well as prompting her to learn, even on a more subliminal level. The CD-Rom is absolutely brilliant, the games are simple yet engaging and Sausage absolutely adores them. Despite having spent all week at school, she actually asks to play the games at the weekend as they’re so enjoyable.

The CD is great fun, especially as it comes with a full song book, allowing us all to sing along and the songs are short and punchy so it never gets boring or feels like a chore. The story book is great too as it has stories to help Sausage learn her letters, as well as giving words for her to read herself and has enough pictures to remain visually engaging too.

With the DVD, I can stick it on for Sausage and happily leave it playing. I’ve noticed she kind of ‘dips’ in and out of it, paying attention to some of it and zoning out on other parts, but I figured she’s soaking it all in, one way or another, which can only be a good thing!

Verdict

Before Sausage started school, I was very much of the opinion that ‘systems’ for learning were pointless – until we started Jolly Phonics (a sentiment which her school teacher shared at our parents afternoon recently). Since we’ve started using the kits alongside Sausage’s schooling, we’ve seen huge improvements in our, already fairly advanced, child but more importantly she finds it fun and engaging enough that she wants to get involved and do the games and activities. The songs stick in her head and have definitely helped her to retain the information she needs.

The fact that Husband and I now understand what her teachers at school are teaching and the way they’re teaching means that we’re able to properly compliment her daily learning and stay abreast of her education in a way that we all enjoy. The kit is good from age 3+, which means you can start this system even before they start school if they’re ready and the exercise books take them all the way through until they’re reading independently.

The whole family can highly, highly recommend this kit!

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Progress…

By Mum's the Word on October 5, 2012 in Education, Family, Parenting

So, I feel like I should probably put paid to a couple of ideas that THIS blog post may have created in my nearest and dearest.

1. I’m not pregnant. I know I’ve said I’d like to be at some point, but I’m far too fat and unhealthy to even consider it at the moment.

2. I’m not moving abroad.

3. I haven’t joined a cult/had a sex change/joined a swingers club

So there.

One of the things that was leaving me feeling rather stymied was Sausage and her reaction to school. I’m not gonna lie to you, people, it’s been a tough couple of weeks.

During the first week, she was only attending for half days and she seemed to get on really well. Then she started to feel poorly and the combination of this and a glib (but hugely irresponsible) comment made to her by one of her TA’s made any confidence that she’d gained completely unravel. We had a week of living with a very unhappy Sausage. She wasn’t herself at all, she had bad dreams, she was tearful from the moment she woke up and dropping her off at school was like untangling myself from a screaming octopus before walking swiftly away. It was breaking all of our hearts but we knew we had to persevere.

However, we seem to have had a breakthrough.

We’ve started walking to school with a couple of Sausages’s friends who are really lovely kids and it’s made her look forward to seeing them in the morning rather than going through the usual anxiety. She’s made some friends in class who she seems to get on very well with, so now, instead of spending her evenings and mornings telling us how much she misses us when she’s at school, she’s happy and excited about things.

I didn’t want to write about all of this at first, it’s been difficult to deal with and if I’m honest, I’ve not felt like a very good Mum at times, worrying that my leaving her when she’s upset will ruin our relationship but I’m glad I listened to Husband and everyone else who said that it’ll just take time. Instead of sitting at home between 9 and 3, feeling like I have a lead ball in my stomach and watching the clock go agonisingly slow, I’m happy to leave her knowing that she’s happy and my days go a lot quicker.

So, that’s a large part of what’s been going on and why I’ve felt so tongue-tied for the past week or so, and hopefully things will gain some semblance of normality from here! As for the rest of it, you’ll just have to wait for the next instalment!

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Silent Sunday

By Mum's the Word on September 16, 2012 in Education, Family, Silent Sunday

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First Day

By Mum's the Word on September 13, 2012 in Education, Family, School

Today was the day. The day.

I woke up an hour before my alarm. Sausage had had a bad dream and got into our bed in the night, so I suspect my early rising was something to do with having her elbow pressing into the back of my head for the previous hour, but I didn’t mind. As I got up, she awoke too and seemed happy enough. She’s a morning person, my kid. In fact, she’s an all-the-time person, we’ve had many a compliment on how happy and content she seems.

It wasn’t until she was situated with her brekkie and watching TV that I said “Are you looking forward to school today?” and do you know what she said?

“Oh, is that today?”

Little moo!

I’d been tossing and turning, sick with worry and she’d forgotten all about it! I have to admit though, that was just the first in a series of ‘best-case scenarios’ that have littered our day. She got dressed in her uniform (which as you know, I can’t post here, that’s just how I roll…) and was raring to go, excited and switched on. If she was nervous, she didn’t let it show at all.

Husband and I both walked her, the beauty of having one parent who’s self-employed and another who’s seemingly unemployable and we chatted away about carnivores and peregrine falcons and bald eagles and trees. There was a load of other people who were also delivering tiny humans who looked FAR too small to be on their way to school, it was a relief in a way to see other people in our situation.

As we got into the side gate, I saw several other mums in the playground who I know and I was really pleased about this, a familiar face is always good and this is a new experience for me too, not just Sausage! As we walked in, one of Sausage’s friends from nursery came and found us and they wandered off together, chatting away. She even formally introduced Sausage to one of her other friends, which meant that my little lady had two allies when she was finally called into class. She was so involved in her networking that when the time came for her to go into class, Husband and I had to call her and ask for a kiss goodbye! Again – best case scenario. I don’t want her to be clinging to us or worrying about us leaving, so I’m super pleased that she had friends to make the situation a bit less intense.

As Husband and I walked home, I think we both felt a bit lost. It was okay though, the time went surprisingly fast and a few emails and a bit of work later and it was time to collect our big girl. She was last to be let out of class but seemed very relaxed and happy. She told us about the new friends she’d made, helping another friend when she hurt herself in the playground and singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Chocolate Bar..” (a completely new one on me!) but all in all, it was pleasant and largely uneventful, which is better than I could ever have hoped for.

I’m so proud of Sausage for handling today in her usual pragmatic way and not letting her nerves or sensitivity get the better of her. She’s an ace kid and I cannot wait to see how all of the new lessons and experiences broaden her mind.

Exciting times for my bezzie mate!

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Which GCSE’s Would You Take Now?

By Mum's the Word on August 26, 2012 in Education, Family, Life

With all the talk of exam results this week, I got to thinking about what GSCE subjects I’d have chosen if I could choose them now. I always think that 14 is such a young age to make the decision, especially as we had it drummed into us that we needed to make the right choices so that we could study what we wanted at A-Level and then Degree level, which is effectively asking a person who’s barely out of puberty to decide what they still want to be doing, 5 days out of seven, until they’re almost 70.

I know that plenty of people retrain or their careers develop into something different, but with education now more expensive than ever, I imagine that kids from families who aren’t wealthy are feeling the pressure to make the right decision as this may be their one opportunity at education. Anyway, I digress.

When I took my options, I struggled. The subjects that I liked the most were English, Maths and Science, which were all compulsory anyway, so choosing the others was an arduous task. I ended up taking English Literature, English Language, Maths, Triple Award Science (which I eventually ended up cutting down to Double Award), IT, Drama, RE and History. We also got a grade for English Speaking and Listening, for which I got an A, so I still put that one on my CV! So what would I take now?

1. Home Economics

I’m pretty sure that the only reason I didn’t do Home Ec was because it was scheduled at the same time as something else I wanted to take, but if I had the chance again, I’d definitely opt for this subject. Maybe it’s the beauty of hindsight, but as an adult I adore sewing and cooking (although can’t claim to be hugely brilliant at either…) and I would have loved to carry on with it past the age of 14.

2. French

I had absolute nightmares with languages at school and wasn’t very good and either French or German, although I still think that this is because of the way we’re taught languages. When you have a baby, that baby learns to speak first then once they’ve been speaking for a while they learn to read and write. This seems like a natural, organic way to learn a language, but at school we were drilled on tenses and whether things were masculine and feminine and it just didn’t soak into my brain. However, if I’d known how hard it was going to be to try and learn as an adult, I might have tried a bit flippin’ harder!

3. Art

When I was younger, I had it drummed into me that Art was a cop-out subject; I wasn’t going to be an artist, so why take art? However, as an adult I find silly things like doodling and colouring really theraputic but don’t have any confidence so I don’t do anything bigger like painting, despite the fact that I think I’d love it…I just don’t know where to start.

4. Philosophy and Ethics

Now, maybe I’m only making this choice because I’m a adult, I suspect that philosophy may have blown my tiny mind when I was 14, but if there’s one thing that most kids could do with, it’s a bit of introspection! Had I the opportunity now, I think I’d find Philosophy absolutely fascinating and the skills you gain from writing essays which simply postulate a theory would actually be quite useful in life (as opposed to vectors in GCSE maths, which I don’t thing I’ve ever used, bloody ever), even if just for the ability to communicate a thought or idea.

So, if you had your chance all over again, what would you choose? Would you do exactly the same and follow the same life path and career that you have now, or would you go for something entirely different? I’d love to know.