Day 5 - The best day yet!

The sun is shining today and everyone is in a positive mood

…except Year 6, it's SATS week and they're all doing exams

0830
I go straight into the playground to say hello to the children. Almost immediately a boy drops his 10p down the drain.  I lift the drain cover and sink my hand into a month's worth of dirty rainwater, and then go and have a wash!

0900
I make cups of tea for the few teachers that are in the staffroom.  I'm finding that that teachers initiate conversation more than I do - because it is their home and I'm the 'alien', I never know whether to break the ice or not…
The result of teachers starting the chat is that I then end up quite happily blabbing on about myself and not about them - I must learn to rein in my anecdotes!






0930
Spent most of the remainder of the morning out on the school playground helping with cricket practice.  I'm finding Year 4 sports an excellent opportunity to chat with children.  It was also a really good chance to chat to one of the PE teachers since - on this occasion - they had proper cricketers come in to lead the lesson (next week they won't be there so I've been roped in to referee the game!)



As it got near to lunch some of the Year 6's came out to run the cake stall - a fantastic affair with not just cakes, but also books for sale and a lucky dip.  We made £60.44 which is a school 'world record' apparently.  Later I was presented with the money in one of the classrooms and then the teacher opened and Q&A about why they had done it - the stall is usually for dog charities and they wanted to do something different this time.

1330
I popped into the staffroom having not eaten or drunk anything all morning! - In addition to being dehydrated and starving hungry, I am also now quite sunburnt!!

1400
In the afternoon I joined the cake stall children for their lesson - I'm not entirely sure what the topic was on (!), the teacher had so skilfully woven together Indian studies, Design Technology, Food Tech, Music, Horticulture and Religious Studies (I'm nog kidding!). We pushed decorated paper boats with our prayers to the Hindu god of the river out on to the pond, whilst playing percussion instruments.