The Philosophy This session is designed to inspire awe and wonder at the unusualness of the world around us and to inspire the idea that things are stranger than we might at first think and to get the children thinking along the same lines as many philosophers: that the world is not as it seems. Many of the pre-Socratics thought that the worl...

Bring in a rectangular object, and on the front it says ‘This is not a book’. The thing is called ‘This is not a book’. So what could it be? Could it be a book? Or must it be something else? How can we find out? Task Questions: Is it a book? If it’s got pages, is it a book? If it’s not got any...

This session was developed by specialist David Birch on the topic of Newspapers. You might want to run this along with the Knowledge session, using newspaper headlines as the sentences in the Knowledge session. Thinking Game Break the circle on 'lying'. Stimulus (Use the powerpoint attached to take you through the session.) ...

Unicorn Horns - thinking about things that don’t exist This is a development of ‘Nobody’s home’ from The If Odyssey and is designed to get the class thinking about non-existent entities. These include fictional characters of all kinds, but they also include some more controversial examples such as Santa Claus and the T...

Designed by Steven Campbell-Harris Starter activity: 'change places if' with a colour focus (change places if your favourite colour is.., change places if you think black is not a colour, change places if you are wearing something blue etc) Main activity: A short poem/Thoughting to read aloud (possibly with the prop of ...

A boy wonders what it is that makes him him and not somebody or something else ... Task Questions: Are you the same as a snail? Are you the same as a racing car? Are you the same as your jumper? What makes you different from a computer? What makes you different from someone else?