Lucy's blog

Careful the things you say. Children will listen. Forgive me quoting one of my favourite Stephen Sondheim songs from Into the Woods but these are wise lyrics and I do think that we should be extremely careful about what we say. Children really do listen, and they listen to...

You'd have to have been living on Planet Mars recently not to have heard about Michael Gove's suggestion to have longer school days and shorter holidays and the negative reaction there has been to this. Mr Gove believes that our school system was designed for a...

There was a really great piece by journalist Tanith Carey in the Sunday Times in December which I've been meaning to blog about for ages and I urge you to read. It's all about her daughter Lily's meltdown at the age of 11 owing to being continually ?pushed'...

I found a review on Mumsnet about Perform the other day. The Mum was waxing lyrical about us and how great our classes are. Her only one complaint was that our Safety Procedures were a little too strict and somewhat annoying. It transpired that the child's father (and...

My three year old daughter is a massive fan of classic musical films such as Annie, The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz. She likes nothing more than to curl up on the sofa and mouth along the words. Luckily, she has a Mum who is quite happy to sit and watch them with her...

A friend forwarded me a really interesting article by journalist Simon Kuper in the FT magazine recently. It tells the story of how, in Jamaica in the 1980s, a group of community health workers began to make weekly visits to babies whose growth had been stunted by infection...

Here at Perform, we often get contacted by casting directors asking if we can provide them children for auditions. They are generally surprised when we tell them that we that this is not something we do and we don't have a theatrical agency attached to our...

Most parents of school-age children will have read (or at least scanned) an Ofsted Report and these undoubtedly play a major part in the choices we make about schools for our children. The best schools attract the most aspirational involved parents while the worst are...

My son starts primary school in September and he's incredibly excited about it. It feels like a real milestone moving from a nursery to a ?big school' especially as he hasn't been at the school's nursery. I've been asking around to find for tips to make...

My son's starting Reception class in September, so the ?Tiger Mother? in me contacted the school to ask when he could start learning an instrument. Apparently, his school has a policy of not starting children until Year 2, so if I want him to begin learning before then,...