Sunny.

I was going to say that I came home under a cloudless blue sky when I turned and looked inland to the east which once again was under solid cloud. But for us it has been yet another sunny day. When we lived in London each year we took the last 3 weeks in June for our family holiday down at Saunton Sands and we always did have lovely weather. 

I spent the day at school working with the Reception children who were designing and making junk model super bugs. As I wanted to make a start on our song/dance/music performance I decided to set up the music ready to play. I thought I had covered all eventualities by having the music on discs and my pen drive but hey ho when I turned on the lap top it started up (which is a bonus) but then froze with the cursor unable to move out of the corner. The next option which was to put the discs in the cd player didn't work as they were data discs. Option 3 was to put the discs in the children's pcs where yes they did play but for everyone's sanity you can only get sound through the headphones. I looked around for a speaker to plug in but 2 spare ones only had bare wires and the big whiteboard speaker was wired into the board. Luckily at that point someone came along who knew what the problem was - the teacher's chair was touching the interactive whiteboard and this was upsetting the lap top even though the whiteboard was not switched on. Later on I was able to bypass the school filter and get on to YouTube so that the children could watch the videos as well as hear the music. Shakira's La la la song has proved to be an excellent choice as the children picked up the rhythms quickly and we had drumming, rattling and dancing all going on at the right times. Not bad for 4 year olds.

During the afternoon playtime we let the children play in the Secret Garden. 2 lads were crawling under some bamboo clumps and I heard one ask the other 'Do you want to be my pet dinosaur?' It's great how nature inspires children's imaginations.

After school I stayed on sorting things out in the classroom then made a quick visit to the Co-Op before heading home.  I had a walk around the garden and saw that the slugs have discovered one of my pumpkin plants. I think I'll go up and put out some slug pellets. Only a few as the dead slugs will be toxic to birds and anything else that eats them. But I can't bear the thought of my carefully nurtured plants being munched up before my eyes.