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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

Illusions and mind tricks: are your eyes fooling you?

Optical illusions Royal Institution Christmas lectures
Are you seeing what's really there, or is your mind tricking you? Professor Bruce Hood has three amazing illusions experiments to try, and explains more about how the brain works in his Royal Institution Christmas lecture.

Have you ever wondered what’s going on inside your head? Your brain is a fascinating collection of cells that power what we do, who we are, how we think and they way we perceive the world around us.

For example, you may think that you see with your eyes, but it’s your brain that tells you what you’re looking at. Professor Bruce Hood from the Bristol University School of Experimental Psychology shows us the power of illusions, and how they work to make the brain create its own version of reality by interpreting things in different ways – or in some instances, making things up entirely!

Try these quick optical illusion experiments to see whether brain is telling you the truth:

Illusion experiment 1

Are the two horizontal rails the same length?

Yes, in fact there are the same! Try cutting a piece of paper to the same length to check. Our brains interpret the information from our eyes based on past experiences. The converging lines of the railway track make us think the upper horizontal rail is further away and therefore must be bigger.

Illusion experiment 2

Stare at the ‘café wall’ picture – are the horizontal lines straight?

Too right they are, but when looking at them they appear to be slanted due to the tile pattern playing tricks with our brain.

Illusion experiment 3

Look at the different vertical grey panels in this picture – are they solid blocks of colour or lighter and darker in some areas?

They are block strips of colour…honestly! However, when positioned next to each other, it makes them look like each strip has darker and lighter elements to it, but it is all in the mind.

Professor Hood explored the brain and all the wonderful things it can do in his Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, ‘Meet Your Brain’.

The Royal Institution Christmas lectures are aimed at young people and families and are a fun and interactive way of finding out more about science, ourselves and the world we live in. Visit the Royal Institution website to watch the lectures from past years for free.

Find out about more great educational TV shows for children in EYFS, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.