Delphi and Advocating Classics Education

Hi everybody,

We got asked recently by Dr Arlene Holmes-Henderson to write a blog for Advocating Classics Education, an organisation promoting the teaching of Classics in schools. Arlene has been wonderfully supportive of us and we were delighted to do it!

You can read the blog on the Advocating Classics Education blog here.

Amidst a very busy term for us, we have been teaching Delphi the Philosopher to our new classes! It is a joy to teach this story and these lessons once again, and the children seem to be enjoying it just as much as in previous years. It is also proving invaluable in developing their learning skills after such a huge disruption in their learning. Last year, we produced a series of lesson blogs, with extensive video and photos, which show what these lessons are like - you can explore them all here.

If you're teaching with Delphi this term, we'd love to hear from you. Please contact us and share what you're getting up to, or come and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

We've also been busy preparing new resources for you. It looks like after a quieter 2020 (in terms of releasing new things, not in terms of everything else!), next year is shaping up to be a big year for us. Watch this space... exciting developments are on their way!

We hope you are all keeping safe and well during these challenging times. Every day we work with children is a day well spent.

All the best,

Dave and Rosie.

Delphi Philosophy.

Delphi and the Recovery Curriculum

Hi everybody,

It’s been a long time since our last update. The impact of the pandemic has meant we’ve had to change our plans quite a bit for this year, but we’ve also been busy developing new Delphi resources too. Now we’re looking forward to the new school year and keen to get back to taking children on philosophical adventures again. We hope you are all keeping safe and well, and are looking forward to the challenges that still lie ahead!

Rebuild Learning Skills

Many schools are now looking at how they can welcome children back to school safely, support their mental wellbeing and start to rebuild their learning skills to catch up for their lost time in school. Delphi Philosophy can form an invaluable part of this. There are always many reasons to teach philosophy to children. In particular at this time, you will help children:

• develop metacognition – one of the key ‘levers’ of the recovery curriculum, to develop a wide range of learning and life skills

• rebuild their reading and comprehension skills as you share the storytelling adventure together

• rebuild children’s communication and language skills

• develop their reasoning and logical skills, which will support their mathematical understanding

• develop the community of the class, learning respect for each other’s ideas

• re-engage with the curriculum with a fun and engaging adventure!

Teaching philosophy to children this year will have more impact than ever so there’s never been a better time to introduce your children to Delphi.

Here’s a reminder of what we offer:

• Our first full scheme of work for key stage 2, Delphi the Philosopher, includes eleven fully illustrated stories, with detailed lesson plans, slideshows, activities, resources and a teaching guide. The whole story is written so that children develop their listening, questioning, reasoning and explaining skills as they follow along. You can see all the lessons in action through our lessons blogs and see what children think of it with our videos. Download the whole scheme here for £50.

• Enquiry Packs are a great way to try out a session with a class, or focus on one particular topic or theme. You can download each pack, containing the story, slideshow, lesson plan, resources and guide for just £5 each. Browse our Enquiry Store here.

• The Home Version of Delphi the Philosopher is an ideal resource if you are home educating. Download the whole story, with bonus content unique to this edition, for just £10.

• Delphi’s Guide to Athens is a completely free website for children, packed with stories, illustrations, photos, big questions and facts. Perfect if you are doing a Greek topic, or for discussions, an interactive class novel or independent work in school or at home.

Over the next year, we are planning to add plenty more resources – including a second full scheme of work for upper key stage 2, new enquiry packs, a special enquiry about learning to learn, and beginning our series of picture books for key stage 1 - and there will be even more to follow! Once things settle down a bit, we will be asking for help to trial new resources, as well as sharing some great teaching and learning advice, so keep an eye out for future e-mails.

If you’re interested in some grown-up philosophical conversations too, you might be interested in After Dinner Conversation - https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com/ They have a huge range of short stories available which are sure to generate a few late night debates! They also offer a virtual book club, podcasts and accept submissions for stories so is well worth a look.

That’s all for today! We wish you a very positive next few months, to you and your little philosophers.

All the best,

Dave and Rosie.

Delphi Philosophy.

Delphi Philosophy at Home

Hi everybody,

Well, a lot has changed since our last update! We hope you are all keeping safe and well, and coping with these strange and difficult times. The coronavirus outbreak has closed our schools and changed some of our plans, but we are trying to use all this time at home to keep developing new Delphi resources too. We hope you’re managing to keep your little ones entertained during these long days!

In this time of home-schooling, the Delphi Philosophy website has lots of resources to help your children get thinking and build their learning and reasoning skills with some fun storytelling at home.

Delphi the Philosopher - Home Version

Available on our Enquiry Store, the Home Version of Delphi the Philosopher contains the complete story of how our favourite young philosopher Delphi met the famous Socrates. This version contains all eleven chapters, plus lots of bonus content including information pages and additional illustrations. This is a wonderful opportunity for adults and children to read the story together at home, discuss the questions and develop their thinking skills together. This format is specially put together to be easy to read on tablets and on other devices and offers hours of fun storytelling and big conversations. During this period of school closure, we are happy to say you can download the entire book for just £10. That’s under £1 for each story!

If you’d like to find out more, you can explore the Delphi the Philosopher pages of our website. You can even listen to the entire story of The Perfect Bedroom for free here. This story is all about the time when Delphi got whatever she wanted for her bedroom – but couldn’t go outside. Exploring themes of happiness and freedom, this is a perfect story for the times and might help children explore some of their thoughts about having to stay inside at the moment!

Delphi's Guide to Athens

This free, interactive resource for children is a fantastic resource to give to children who are working from home. Packed with stories, illustrations, photos, facts and big questions, Delphi’s Guide to Athens brings Ancient Greece to life in a fun and accessible format for children. Teachers might also want to base some tasks on this website to give to children – you can find a big list of ideas for how to use the site here.

We also now have a printable version of Delphi’s Guide to Athens available. We were going to distribute this to schools who have registered their interest in trialling new resources, but obviously now isn’t really the time. However, if a printable version would be useful to you, please Contact Us and I can send you a copy free of charge if you're happy to provide some feedback on your experiences using the resource.

We were hoping to share some other new resources for trialling this year, but it’s now looking like this will have to wait until September. We may not have many updates over the next few months, however you can keep up to date with us by following our Facebook and Twitter pages. You might also want to follow the Illustrations by Rosie page, to see more of the wonderful work she’s producing at the moment.

We are busy working on the follow up to Delphi the Philosopher, as well as other new enquiries, so we hope you’ll look forward to seeing these in the future!

Wishing you good health and best wishes.

Dave and Rosie.

Delphi Philosophy.