Hide and Seek and Laminating

Well. I'm away for Christmas at last.

I've been having fun with my twin seven-year-old cousins over the past two days. We've played a lot of hide and seek (it's not really fair: I'm at the double disadvantage of not knowing any good hiding places in their house, and being about four times as big as they are). We've been to the park, where I kicked chunks of ice off the playground floor for them to pick up and smash, a form of entertainment which would perhaps have lasted for hours (days, even?) had not one of them, to my relief, needed the toilet, providing a worthy excuse to go home. Some homework has been done (theirs, not mine!) and some television has been watched. Although I was quite astonished yesterday when I went into the lounge to tell them they could watch TV. "No thanks," they said, "we're too busy reading the Bible." I heard the television go on about a minute afterwards.

Grandad and me have been employed by my aunt to laminate about a million leaflets for the NHS. I've also been given the unenviable task of sorting out a rota for cooking and washing up over Christmas. This I blithely agreed to do, before suddenly realising that it meant I had to assign people to do work on Christmas Day. You love washing up, right, Dad? Anyway, there can't be any swaps or complaining now: I don't know whether all that laminating made me a bit giddy but somehow, amongst all those leaflets, the rota went through as well.

A sad lack of snowmen

Well, it happened. At least, it mostly happened. Lectures were cancelled today on account of the snow (only a thin covering in Scarborough, but presumably it made for a difficult journey for everybody travelling from afar). Unfortunately, though, the telephone tree was not entirely effective, and about fifteen of us arrived, cold and soggy, for maths at 9am. Half an hour of division later, we went home again.

It really was a bit of an anticlimax. After an exhausting term, it might have been nice to see our coursemates, wish everybody a happy Christmas, that kind of thing. But we just slid our way home through the slush, and sloped off to start packing our bags early. (Well, not me, because I'm sticking around until Monday, but a lot of the PGs have headed home already).

Somehow the snow is making me feel less Christmassy. Yeah, you get snow around Christmas in films - but it's always clean and fresh, and generally involves outdoor ice-rinks with pretty people gliding gracefully around them. Quite a contrast to streets full of slush, soggy trouser legs and disinclination for excursions which we get in the real world. I haven't even seen a single snowman!

Uni

I guess university is more tiring than school. There certainly seems to be a lot of work to do at the moment. Today we had an entire day of child protection training: necessary of course, but kind of intense. Although I have to confess that the part that affected me most was the description of one child's hospital visit. I've always been quite squeamish about descriptions of injuries and people's insides, but I seem to be getting worse as I get older. Last year I tried to attend a day-long first aid course, but half an hour in I found myself feeling quite queasy - then very queasy - then panicky - then crawling from the room, scarcely able to see or hear anything. They sent me home on the bus. It's most embarrassing (not to mention highly inconvenient) but it's getting so bad now that even thinking a situation might cause me to go faint causes me to go faint...

Anyway. It's also been raining for about two days now (coinciding almost exactly with the length of time Noah has been out of the country: how Romantic of the weather to indulge me in the illusion of pathetic fallacy). I'm a little jealous, for I understand that some parts of our nation have experienced the delights of a form of precipitation whiter, gentler, colder and altogether more fun.

It's forecast to snow up here too though. In fact yesterday in university some of my fellow students were hopefully compiling a telephone tree - you know, just in case they have to close the campus. Which, of course, we all dutifully hope won't have to happen.

Honest.

My Last Day!

Today was our last observation - and our last day at our first school. I can hardly believe how quickly the time has gone by! I'm really going to miss our lovely class teacher and TA, and as for the children - we've met so many charming characters, and it's rather sad that we won't know how they get on as the year progresses.

Looking back, though, I think there has been some development (on their part as well as ours!) even during the month we've been there. We've seen some friendships develop in the class, and although there we still get a lot of complaints I think I've noticed a bit more willingness to share toys. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking! I'm sure I've changed over the month, though. My Teacher Voice is much more convincing than it used to be! We've also discovered that simpler activities can actually be more effective than the ones that seem really exciting. Today's investigation, which involved finding seven beads in the sand tray, went a lot better than the time we took them all outside to build walls out of straw. And the children appeared to enjoy it just as much. Maybe they were riding on the residual excitement of donning their Christmas Show outfits for the first time this morning.

Anyway, it's back to uni for two weeks now before Christmas. Long lectures, essay work, all kinds of theory and no actual children... As I might have mentioned, I'm really going to miss school!

Sand pirates, storytelling and an elf with no pants

This week our area is the sand tray. We had a piratical story yesterday, so today we used numbered treasure chests and buried 'coins' in the sand to get the children to practise counting and numeral recognition. But I have to confess that my favourite part of the activity was the pirate hats. I made them at the last minute out of newspaper, thinking that wearing a special 'pirate puzzle hat' might help the children to concentrate on problem-solving. I'm not sure how well that worked (they kept falling off into the sand!) but at least all the children wanted to do the activity because it entailed wearing a hat. And best of all, I got to be a pirate too! I even tried a pirate accent with some of the groups (but for some reason they just looked a bit bemused).

In the afternoon we had a visit from a storyteller. He came armed with very engaging home-made puppets and a repertoire of silly faces that made the children howl with laughter, and entertained us all with the tale of the Elves and the Shoemaker. As you probably know, the poor shoemaker (who is so poor that he can't even afford any food or firewood) only has enough leather left for one pair of shoes. He cuts them out, but his hands are so cold he can't thread the needle to sew them, so he leaves the leather on the bench. In the morning, he is astonished to find that the leather has become a beautifully-made pair of shoes, which he proceeds to sell at a great profit, allowing him to purchase food, firewood and leather for two more pairs of shoes. A similar thing happens the following night. The shoemaker decides to stay up and see how the shoes get made; to his great surprise, elves (or in this version, an elf) are covertly assisting him by night. But he looks very cold: he doesn't have any clothes on — "Not even any pants!" exclaims the storyteller. So in return for his help, the shoemaker sews some little clothes for the elf. And everyone pretty much lives happily ever after.

When we asked the children (who roared with laughter throughout, both when there was a joke to get and when there wasn't), "What was your favourite part of the story?", more than one replied, "I liked the bit where he didn't have any pants on!"

Let's just hope they also manage to learn that it's a good idea to help people...