Red Nose Day.

Yesterday evening was a real pain. After a relaxed morning followed by an afternoon spent outside - hula-hooping first then a walk aroung the school grounds discussing what the children did and didn't like I then had a stressful staff meeting. Nothing major but as a result I've got lots of extra work to do and have to change a few things simply for the sake of doing the same as everyone else. Then the PC played up, I went upstairs and the light bulb in the bedroom blew and with it went my personal fuse. Today we all came into school dressed as 'book' characters for Red Nose Day and my choice of The Bad Tempered Ladybird (black leggings, a red fleece with added black spots, a black thermal snood and red fluffy deely boppers) suited me perfectly. The children came in a variety of costumes, many were Disney cartoon characters while Harry Potter, Where's Wally, pirates and ballerinas also featured. A couple of my boys came in full camo kit and justified their choice by clutching information books on military history but they did have to hand over their toy guns to be stored in my cupboard along with a plastic hand grenade and a sword( from Peter Pan). In this country Halloween is not a major festival so the children don't have a tradition of dressing up apart from birthday parties or special days at school. Adults in this part of the country however seem do a lot of dressing up, I think that starts in their student days and here the tradition of dressing up for carnivals has shifted to parties in general (especially hen and stag nights) and to New Year's Eve when the towns are full of people old and young dressed up and partying in the streets.

It was raining rather heavily this morning as we made a quick dash to the next-door junior school to join them (all dressed in red) to sing the Red Nose Day song after being told silly jokes by their Head teacher. Then it was back to school for more book related activities. Book week just happened to coincide with Red Nose Day hence the cross-over. Yesterday I had given my class the freedom to plan and write any book at all but I snuck in an educational slant by insisting that they wrote a plan first before letting them loose with blank books that I had made for them. My only rule was no violence ie killing etc and they worked on those for most of the day. One little girl, not in my top group, wrote an amazing book about Windsor Castle with lots of interesting information and beautiful illustrations. I've cleared a shelf in our book corner for all their books so that they can really feel that they are authors.
I stayed late after school making some of the changes that I needed to do so I didn't get out for a walk. I didn't get out yesterday either as a light rain was falling when I made my way home and the farmer was out muck spreading on the fields by the road which was consequently covered with a light layer of slurry and a much thicker layer of mud from the tractor tyres.