Talking Hands Talking Feet Blog
New Education Pathways

The Natural Education package is now ready. You can check out the video preview at the top right of the page This song, video and lesson plan explores the invaluable ways of living we learn from Mother Nature: biodiversity, conservation, recycling, sustainability.  It is designed for children ages 9-12 but younger children will also love [...]

Continue reading “Natural Education” »

Teachers and Parents! Find the courage to defy the absurd pressures of the achievement culture. What are we pushing our children into? Seriously! Do we realize the stress associated with education is now systemic? Do we then realize that stress shuts down higher learning capacity, reducing our attention and awareness to a narrow biological focus? [...]

Continue reading “Re-humanize Education!” »

Seven years ago we planted a young maple tree in our front garden. It was skinny and frail so we supported it with stakes and rope thinking it wouldn’t be able to resist the winter and spring winds otherwise. But a wise gardener friend told us to remove the stakes so the tree could stand [...]

Continue reading “The Winds of Resistance” »

Songs to Educate is a response to a need. The need, simply stated, is for teachers (of any background) to be able to bring the arts back into the classroom. Stated better, it is to be able to integrate the arts in the academic curriculum! It is easier than one might think. It doesn’t require [...]

Continue reading “ARTS in your Toolkit” »

True experiential learning includes what we experience on the inside! Everything we think, intend, feel and do INSTRUCTS our inner lives. It is inescapable. In fact, our internal balances and stability, our internal health and well-being determine so much more that happens ‘on the outside’ than is generally given credit. So much of the world’s [...]

Continue reading “Educating the Inner Life” »

The “Math-a-magic philosophy” really comes out from the heart of Arts Integrated Education – which in part, is about left/right brain hemisphere crossover and integration. It’s like learning to play music: The left brain picks up repetitive patterns, sequences, musical ‘syntax’, meter, and certain rhythmic elements and can translate musical notation; whilst the right brain [...]

Continue reading “More Math-a-magic” »

Arts Integrated Education is a way of thinking; a way of life; it is an approach to just about everything! Before “teaching” anything, it asks the question of oneself: What is the value and relevance of this subject? It causes you to search for a meaningful context. Then you and your students have a motive [...]

Continue reading “Math-a-magic Revealed” »

Arts Integrated Education involves both hemispheres of the head brain working in alternation and firing simultaneously! Here is a good example of how it works: If you have ever learned and become fluent in a foreign language, you have probably experienced the following. Language is ultimately learned by assimilation and immersion. That’s when it truly [...]

Continue reading “Brain Hemisphere Integration” »

We’ve been asked by primary school teachers how do we suggest using the Tri Paks? The Tri Paks in the www.SongsToEducate.com website are thematic song trilogies; groups of three songs that go together well musically and content-wise within a specific theme. They are a threefold exploration of specific subjects. For example, for primary grade Social [...]

Continue reading “Song Trilogies” »

The Talking Hands Talking Feet online resource is now up and running! It is called Songs to Educate. The aim of it is to provide an easily accessible and affordable service to educators inspired by arts integrated education. Songs to Educate offers original curriculum based songs with dance accompaniment (instructional videos) all of which are [...]

Continue reading “Introducing SongsToEducate.com” »