School PE.

My Monday morning PE slot is the favourite of my PE sessions with the children because the timing allows me to get out the bigger equipment. In recent years there has been a big push to increase the amount of physical activity the children do which is a good thing but in terms of practicality daily sessions of 20-40 mins (including getting changed) don't leave a lot of time for setting up (& putting away) equipment. We do have a PE curriculum scheme which is rather dreary so we often move off into activities that fit into the current topic (as with last term's Bollywood dancing which then moved into Stomp dancing). Having the first slot on a Monday morning allows me to set up a series of multi-skills activities which the children rotate through. As we do this every week the children are able to do most of the activities independently leaving me free to supervise off the floor work. The set up is the same every week (the activities are always slightly different and are progressively more demanding). Most of my class are now quite happy to walk along a narrow beam 2ft off the floor and even add a small jump in the middle and then jump off a higher stool at the end when initially they could hardly jump up on the stools or inch along a beam only 1ft off the floor. We used to have a big climbing frame that swung out from the wall but it had so little use it was eventually got rid of. I'm not a naturally athletic person so I do empathise with the children who are not that keen on PE and try to make the lessons enjoyable. We have some equipment in the playground but this country goes overboard with 'health and safety' regulations and most things are not allowed for that reason. Interesting ice shapes found in the garden yesterday.

Nothing much of note today, just rain, work and more rain. I was amused when marking the Monday spelling test, instead of ask, asked and asking 2 of my class wrote arsk, arsked and arsking which does actually fit in with the local Devon accent but still had to be marked wrong.
This evening I ripped out the lino from our downstairs toilet. Yesterday there was a minor flood, I think from the overflow pipe and the water had gone under the lino, not for the first time. I decided it was time to get rid of the lino to let the underlying concrete dry. Then I can think about tiling the floor or taking the easy option and using some concrete paint at least for the moment. I still bear the scar of a cut on my arm from when I was using a stanley knife to cut that very heavy duty (new) lino which I had found in a skip (dumpster) about 15 years ago.