Purple potatoes and painting the sky

I wandered around Sainsbury's last night looking for something for tea. I could not think of anything apart from baked potatoes. In the potato section I was drawn to a bag with purple lettering. The potatoes are called something like purple glory. They have very dark skins, almost black. I was not expecting the colour of the insides! Really vibrant purple. Imagine mashed potato, or purple chips! They were really tasty, and looked excitingly garish with the orange baked beans. Mmmm, purple and orange food!

Today we painted the sky for the Three Billy Goats Gruff display. We rollered one colour of blue, then toothbrushed turquoise and Prussian blue. Then we sponged white using number sponges. We made a lovely mess and got very dirty but it was really fun!

I had a brainwave about how to arrange the display. I normally just make guesses about the sizes of large painted backgrounds, and the rough shapes, but I always end up getting it slightly wrong. I suddenly thought that if I taped up newspaper, then drew the shapes of the background on it, I could then cut it out as a pattern. I wish I had thought of this years ago! Now the sweet green grass, the dry yellow grass, the sky and the river are there. Tomorrow I have to put up boxes the children painted for the bridge. Then we just have to make the goats and the troll.

This week we have had parents evenings-two so far and one more tomorrow. I am really enjoying them and the parents have been so pleased with the learning journey books, so all the hard work has been worth it. We have not had parents evenings before, arguing that we see parents all the time and so don't need to. This year however, we are really trying to improve our contact with parents and sharing knowledge about their children with each other, so we decided to start having them. It is so lovely to have 15 minutes dedicated to talking about one child, with no noise or interruptions, and not just because there has been some kind of incident.