Happy Valentine's Day.

While I try to fight against the rampant commercialism of all our traditions I would have been very disappointed not to have any tokens of appreciation this morning. And bless his socks (I've trained him well), card, chocolate (bar not box) and roses brightened up my morning. In the UK the exchange of Valentine's cards is very much a romantic declaration. However I did cut out little hearts from pink post-its, added smiley stickers and stuck them on each child's tray this morning (from the tooth fairy?) We then encouraged the children to write compliments on pink paper to give to their friends as a sign of friendship.

In general it has been a good day in school. The sun shone and it was so warm in the afternoon that we even had the classroom windows open to let some fresh air in. This week the children are making books about castles, something they are all interested in so I am expecting a good standard of work and motivation.

Back to last Saturday. The frogs have been very busy in the pond which is already a third full of frog spawn. This happened last year, then we had a cold spell, the pond froze over and so did most of the frog spawn.
Click on the above picture to enlarge it and check out how many frogs can be seen in the water. I have to creep up the steps to the terrace to catch a view of the frogs because as soon as they see me coming they dive down frantically leaving only a few ripples and an awful lot of frog spawn. Also on Saturday we watched the jackdaws gathered in the trees viewing the new chimney cages. They took turns to fly down to the chimney and inspect our defences, hopefully now they'll clear off and we wont have to worry about a chimney full of sticks and mess.