This Week

This week has been quite a sociable one. Yesterday I had a meeting with an educational psychologist about one of the children in my class.Then I showed her up to the staffroom as neither of us had had lunch. We had a conversation about career paths and the changes to special needs and educational psychology training and role. It was interesting. Straight after school there was a union meeting-not very well attended this time but very interesting and one which meant I talked to a few people I never see at school. My friend Cleo is the union rep in school so it is nice to see her from time to time as well. We are all so shut up in our classrooms at that place that some weeks I don't see her at all! Then last night my friend turned up out of the blue at school so I showed her around, we looked at the ASD special provision area, - a new thing called 'The Harbour' and run by a lovely woman called Wendy, who took time to show us around. Children apply for a place in this provision and spend some time in there and some in class with support. My friend also works in a special school for children with various learning disabilities so they were talking the same language and getting excited about the resources they had. Then we came home for a cup of tea then went to the local shops together. Today I had a really interesting conversation with a young Canadian teacher who has been coming to the school as a supply teacher for a while now, but who I have never talked to. He overheard me talking about a child in my class with a speech sound difficulty, and how I can help him . The teacher had a speech impediment as a child and related in interesting detail how he felt at school going through lots of tests and medical examinations to find out what was 'wrong' with him. The way this affected his self esteem was significant, and, as a result of how he felt, and how he and his parents chose to deal with it-in the end choosing not to carry on with the tests but to work hard and to develop his own ways to study, has become a reflective teacher with a great interest in the different ways that individuals learn, and a real desire to empower children to realise that they can learn even if they feel judged or depressed by their experience of school so far. As well as all this he is a tap dancer! Most interesting.
Then tonight another friend who I have not talked to for a while rang me and we were on the phone for an hour. I am hoping the weekend continues in the same way!
The felt pictures were last weekend. The one below is one of four. I was thinking of table mats and wanted to make them look like china plates. I am not sure they do but I quite like them anyway. I have two this colour and two with turquoise borders.

 Face before felting. I am getting better at keeping the small details in place as I felt. 

 Rose larger piece. Afterwards I thought I should have left the bottom of the stalk leafless as it would have looked more 'right' but too late!

 I am using some new bubble wrap and it leaves really deep indents in the surface of the felt. Not sure what can be done about this.

 I finished my second flower wreath this week. I like these colours together. I am making bunting now.

New home corner resources at school. I love the fifties feel of the design. They are wooden painted models and very different to the usual plastic stuff.

 This is one of my lovely colleagues tossing a play dough pancake! It is black play dough scented with coca cola flavouring-it smelled delicious! (I didn't make it and had to ask about the smell-just couldn't place it)

 Weird face I drew last night. It is snowing in front of the face as I was just trying to cover the face up a bit! I enjoyed folding the end of the page.

Driving home tonight. The sky was amazing-sun setting, smudgy clouds, and contrails gradually breaking up in the most beautiful way. It was a pleasure to sit at the traffic lights watching it all.

 My work pile for tomorrow. I am going to take my time and try to enjoy it! I cleaned the house tonight so I can get all this done tomorrow but I will probably have a break and go to meet my friend at the boot fair for a while. Then on Sunday I am going with another friend to an antiques fair. I am planning not to buy anything- or very little at least! But it is fun to look.

Crow Making a Woodpecker Sound

I didn't know that crows made this noise. I was looking for a woodpecker. Each time he made the noise his tail feathers spread out slightly. It sounds very windy in the film but you can still hear the sound.

Spring Flowers

Crochet flowers that take three minutes each. Maybe four. Not long so lots can be made quickly. I am using white wire coat hangers to tie them to and voila a Spring wreath!

Woolly Pursuits

I haven't been chasing sheep. I have been making things from wool. Nothing unusual there I suppose, and a good way to spend the last few days of the week. Below is the finished scarf. It is not easy to photograph a scarf and make it look good so I got out my plastic French lady to help. 

 I thought I had better get on with making some things for the fair I am doing in April. These granny squares are for bunting which I finished this afternoon. I have made one little doll blanket. I have no idea if little girls (or boys) want blankets for their dolls but I am going to make a few in case. It is knitted. It doesn't look much but took ages! Thirty little squares to knit, join and sew the ends in of. I found out how to do neat and fairly flat joining which I was not very good at. That was mainly done on Friday whilst watching the curling. I have also nearly made a crocheted flower wreath using a white wire coat hanger as a base. I like how that is coming along. The flowers are from Lucy of Attic 24 via a crochet magazine. Each flower takes only a few minutes to make so that has been quite quick. I still have leaves to add.

 This is my prototype mushroom pincushion. I also like how this turned out and it was fairly quick to make. I have ordered some plain cotton reels from eBay as mine all still have cotton on them. I keep all my ends of yarn in glass jars, ready to be used for something or other. They look pretty in the jars.

 This is what Cassie liked best about my activities. The soft pile of balls of wool to snuggle against. I had to get loads of balls out as I needed to be able to choose from lots of colours. I am gradually working my way through my vast wool reserves!

Pastel Hats

 Pastel hatted people who look like swimmers. They were not intended to but I quite like that they do. 

Half term improved today-no work, a bit of crocheting and knitting, dyeing my hair, (during which process the postman knocked-but I am not proud and our postmen are nice!), hoovering,  then visiting my brother in his new house in Rainham. It is a good house with lots of space and very light and bright. My Mum visited too and we watched the curling in the Olympics together. It is actually really good. We watched Sweden and GB. My Mum is quite an expert on it! I missed the part where GB beat Sweden as I was stuck in a queue on the motorway because of animals in the road (I found out after the traffic started moving again.) But I am in on Friday so will be able to watch the final then. Hurrah!

Half Term

So far half term has been work and not much else. I worked most of Saturday, half of Sunday and till lunchtime today. All in all about fifteen hours on my tracking. The management and outside people are taking an unprecedented interest in it all, with the implication (in my mind anyway) that we either haven't got sufficient evidence, or that we are making wrong judgements. We have an advisor coming in to do moderation with us in a couple of weeks who will work with each of the Foundation Stage teachers, so I want to be very well prepared and have been extra thorough with my tracking this time. The whole system is heavily flawed I feel, but it is the system I have to work within and so have to do the best I can. I have been reading this book about early years education and how it is too much too soon for young children. It has been reviewed and re-written (the curriculum not the book) but I don't find it any better. It is in fact more confused in many aspects and so the levels of the children in certain areas of learning do not make sense to anyone who isn't using the document to assess them. It is one of those reading experiences that confirms everything I suspected but puts it so much better than I ever could. On Monday three of us worked all day to continue sorting out cupboards and storage. The mice had been in one of the cupboards we were working on and had covered every shelf with droppings and urine. So we had to spend a lot of time cleaning stuff as well as sorting it out. I came across two of them, one in a lovely tissue paper nest he had made for himself, and another-a little fat one, who was sitting behind a cupboard in my room that I was moving. He just sat for a couple of seconds staring at me! We did have a nice pub lunch so it wasn't all bad!

Still thinking about tea...

 I found this in the charity shop. So sweet! Possibly to go in for small world play, or possibly not. 

 Tea cosy hat and jammy dodger earrings...

 A cut out paper person-I am not sure what I was trying to do here-I wanted a paper doll in my journal but the mechanics eluded me so this came about instead!

We watched a top of the pops disco special the other night and one of the songs was YMCA-the McBurney branch was the one they were dancing in front of. I wrote it down so I could look it up-it has nothing to do with the girl.

 Cassie has had a bonanza week for boxes with two so far.

 This is her waiting for me to start work this morning. 

 This is a picture of some of the new lunch tables delivered this Monday. I liked the view from the top of the stairs. The school is full of delivery men (bringing new furniture), removal men (taking away old furniture), workmen and Andy-our premises manager, who has too much to do!

Outside in and Inside Out

It was all go up at the shops the other day. Things were topsy turvy. 

The Newsagent was having the window replaced, which made it open to the street.

 And someone had recently been at work painting large capital letter signs announcing that the squares of pavement in front of the cashpoints are private. I have not noticed this before but it is an interesting technique, to create an imaginary barrier with neon yellow paint. Maybe it belongs to the bank. Or maybe it is to ensure that someone does not look over your shoulder as you enter your  pin number. It needs some sort of creative graffiti to enhance it and make the meaning clear.