Hunts ex-head teaches parents to play
A FORMER Huntingdon primary school head has set up a new company aimed at showing parents how to help their small children learn through play.
But Cyndy Fiddy’s first endeavour, on Thursday August 16, will be a course aimed at taking the mystique out of school life from a parent’s perspective for those whose children are about to start at primary school for the first time.
The education consultant, who was head of Huntingdon Primary School until Christmas 2011 and was previously head of St Paul’s in Cambridge, has spent 30 years in education, in and out of the classroom.
Her new venture, which will use a variety of venues across Cambridgeshire, is based on creative workshops aimed at adults who work with or look after children and also with those in the business world who want to develop effective teams by improving their ability to share and communicate with each other, she told The Hunts Post.
“I plan to use a whole range of arts and crafts activities to help parents teach their children through play, from the fine motor skills involved in calligraphy to junk modelling,” she added. “It is never too late to learn and to have fun at the same time – regardless of age.
“Learning through hands-on experience is more effective than any other style of learning. We use this to support others to access learning via the arts and specifically through play.
“The same principles can be used to create effective teams, and we can demonstrate how play can lead to good, strong, supportive relationships in the business world too.
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“We never cease to learn if we open our minds to all possibilities and all opportunites.
“Play is an ideal vehicle through which to do this as often we don’t even realise we are learning when we are at play - just watch children in a sandpit: they are playing at sandcastles but they are also learning what it is like to share space and resources with others, to hear vocabulary related to their task, to communicate so that their castle becomes part of a game involving other children and, much more.”
Her company, Learn@Play Limited, is based at her home in Eaton Ford.
Ms Fiddy was guided and mentored in her new venture by NWES, which runs the Creative Exchange on the Longsands campus in St Neots, where her starting-school courses will be based.
INFORMATION: Learn@Play is at 79 Crosshall Road, Eaton Ford PE19 7AB: telephone 01480 385960.
