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I’ve been wondering why it is that horse-racing isn’t as popular as many other sports. Is it perhaps the fact that an animal is involved, and we subconsciously perceive the animal to be doing the work as opposed to the human, therefore we have little sense of involvement with the rider? Or is it the association with gambling? Royal Ascot does seem to set the nation alight in the summer, but let’s be honest, we’re interested in everything OTHER THAN the racing.

We love the hats, the fancy picnic concept, and of course the antics – Royal or otherwise (remember Diana and Fergie and the umbrellas?). But we don’t really seem to pay attention to the races themselves. Would we be more interested if the riders themselves were more glamourous, or had more glamourous lives (does anyone know a horse-racing WAG ?), as opposed to the audience members.

Would we be more interested if it was a team sport? Or perhaps it is a simple case of creating demand – if it was on TV more (other than on weekends when 9/10 families let their children monopolise the TV) we would learn more and therefore become greater supporters.

FYI – a lovely bit of trivia I like and always good to test the children — what is the only Olympic event where women and men compete head-to-head? The equestrian events!!

A few ideas for those of you stuck for new ideas about Euro 2008 in the classroom, here are a few of my kids’ favourites: making a football shaped cake can be a challenge. So too can making black icing; social studies … exploring football and soccer collectibles, what makes things ‘collectible’, how are prices determines, what could you start collecting now; footballs, of various shapes and sizes, are wonderful tools for exploring shapes and geometry; cultural differences: explore European versus North American ‘football’, discovering similarities, differences, and historical links; simple enough, why not change your maths worksheets to having football examples and symbols; maths: explore why an American football and a European football bounce in different ways, due to their shape.  How do other balls bounce, and why?  (Actually you can check out a few experiments on that topic at our Summer of Sport resource pages.)

I’ve been having a debate with my friends recently, about whether Euro 2008 would be any more interesting to us non-footy fans, if England had made it.  The consensus is, sadly, (I must say, my sample here is 90% women, and we’re being far too stereotypical in our views here) that we would have had some great WAG moments, if we had made it!  Surely, David would have earned some more caps and the Posh versus Colleen saga would have continued…   Posh would have shown us the latest designer ensemble that we could neither fit nor afford, and Colleen would model the one we could, but wouldn’t want to.   And we would have had some great fashion tips, in the guise of the latest animal print shell suit to buy.  Weirdly, the second most frequent comment was about goal celebrations.  Even my fellow yummy mummies remember Peter Crouch’s weird 1980’s style robot dance, and want to see more (though maybe that’s just perhaps because we think he and Abby are such a cute (if not amazingly gravitationally mis-matched) couple).  Men, on the other hand, seem quite interested in the actual line-up. Amazing!  Would Beckham get more caps? Would he score at all?  Would we have an amazing 16 year olds to suddenly be called up and impress the socks off everyone?  I’m not sure if I’m sad England’s not in it, or just non-plussed.   But I will admit, the kids love some of the bits of the official Euro 2008 website (euro2008.uefa.com) though we’ve had good fun developing our own board games that are WAY better than their rather dull memory game!

Are you starting to count down the days until the summer holidays?  If so, your class is probably even more likely to be drifting off into thoughts of Euro 2008 and beyond.
But all is not lost on the creative resource front.  Teachable is running a campaign this summer, to promote the benefits of using sports-themed lessons to teach everything from maths to history. With the usual great range of sports on this summer (football, tennis, etc), plus the Beijing Olympics, we believe now is the time to engage your class with topical presentations and activities.

We will be developing a few themed resources ourselves, under the Summer of Sport banner, but we would very much like to see more contributions in a similar vein. Read more about contributing here.
Alongside that we will be running a series of sports-themed competitions for our members. Watch this space for more!

We’re in the business of selecting the best resources for teachers to use, but we’ve seen a few duffers this month. So in the spirit of Ascot Week, we thought we’d run our own Donkey Derby: a race for all those resources which are a little less than thoroughbred!

It’s a close finish down the final furlong, but the results are…

In third place, and with a quite rightly anonymous trainer, we have Blank Sheet.
In second place, with a young American owner and trainer team, we have AP Biology.

I truly hope, as they claim, this didn’t get 3/5 in the real exam!
And in first place, with a great pedigree (but using some unusual training methods), is Perimeter Rap. As you wouldn’t hear at Ascot: ‘You go gurl!!’

‘Art’ was the single most popular search on Teachable in May / early June.  We only have a handful of Art resources at the moment, so any contributions in that area would be welcome.

After that the main searches were for science related resources:

• Cells
• Dinosaurs
• Age of the earth
• Analogue vs digital
• Capacitors
• Antarctica
• Global Warming
• Symmetry

We like to give our users what they want before they have to ask, so anyone with presentations or worksheets that cover these areas would be doing everyone a favour.