Wednesday: what will you read about today

The first people of Ireland...


“A thousand years ago, Ireland was an economic hub, through which passed people and goods flowing from Scandinavia into western Europe and towards Africa, and it made Dublin a town of dizzying importance. That it was a town at all was something of a novelty in a country of monastic settlements and scattered farmsteads. Settlements in Ireland were spaced out and extended families often lived in forts. There were promontory forts, built on land jutting out over the sea, so clearly easier to defend, and there were the more common circular ringfort farmsteads, which were surrounded by a bank of earth and sometimes stones to make for better defence against raiders and against wild animals, such as wolves...
The ringforts would occasionally have been accompanied by souterrains, man-made caves. Their construction was sometimes simple, involving a tunnelling of the clay or soft rock. But they could also be quite ingenious, such as those dug into the raised parts of the ringforts and which often sprouted off into separate hallways and chambers. A really impressive example at Donaghmore, near Dundalk, Co Louth runs for a total of about 70m, contains about 5 passages at a couple of levels, and had ventilation shafts designed into walls that still hold their shape despite it being maybe a thousand years or more since the tunnel was first dug.”

Read more at:
The Irish (& other foreigners): from the first people to the Poles by Shane Hegarty
Shelved in the Main Shelves on level 2: 941.5 HEG



Why learning is not all in your head...

“What we call the ‘terrible twos’ behaviour is simply the child’s exaggeration of our movements and emotions to gain a full sensory-motor understanding of them. The child is intrigued by the physical sensations of these new-found emotions, and great theatrics often occur. We may label these outbursts as temper tantrums, when they are simply emotional, physical, multisensory learning activities. Expression through movement is very important to the learning of emotions. At this age the child has no cognitive or manipulative thought directing the emotion. They simply become the emotion! “

Read more at:
Smart moves: why learning is not all in your head by Carla Hannaford
Shelved in the Main Shelves on level 2: 612 HAN