INDICATIVE TIMETABLE - PLEASE CHECK with richard before you arrive:

Morning sessions: 11am-12.30pm (Tuesdays to Fridays)

After-school sessions: 4.30-5.30pm (Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays)

Saturdays 10.30am-12 (midday)

On the second Saturday of each month: 2-3.30pm (this is part of the Balsall Heath Second Saturday festival)

Further information about Richard's teaching

CDT for young children 2 to 10 years old

Teaching of CDT craft skills and music to such young children is multisensory based on an extension of Montessori Practical Life Activities. 

CDTX – ‘eXtension’ of some Montessori 3 to 6 eXercises to dexterity with electrical, pneumatics and mechanical ‘connection’ of items to the point at which the ‘circuit’ or ‘assembly’ works to serve some ‘end use’. 

This eXtends to the ‘workshop’ processes of manipulation of machine controls in CDT. Such as the repetition of one or two simple operations to achieve an ‘end result’. Thus contributing to the child’s later ‘ownership’ of the ‘skill’. 

CDT  CRECHE – For play and rest for baby and toddler siblings. Besides ‘play’ items as found in a creche, its special ‘extra’ is a pair of small low workbenches each with its own vice and tool rack. 

There the eager 2 year-old can enjoy doing what they often do to the furniture at home, but on a piece of wood. Sawing, drilling holes and knocking nails into it.  

MUSIC – Composition and Playing

This is taught as an extension of alphanumeric literacy skills as a datastructure for the encryption and decryption of pitch and duration of sounds. 

It can be extended in a sensorial way to instrumental instruction via the ‘information technology’ appertaining to the instrument to play the relevant ‘notes’ and so get the right sounds out of it. Also as an extension of Montessori ‘Aural training’ in which  ‘real’ Montessori teaching uses ‘Montessori Bells’. 

We use ‘Electronics’ and ‘Instruments’.  

NB: If the child wants to learn to ‘seriously play’ the instrument, he or she should go to an expert music teacher of that instrument. 

Our efforts are aimed at being able to ‘read’ music and ‘read’ the instrument. 

The quality of sound it makes is dependant on the child’s own efforts.

The main value of this could be as a ‘start-up’ to the child’s possible future interest in music. At this stage, ‘Music for fun’.