Sunny.

Today has been bright and crisp, more sun and a little cooler.

I've enjoyed teaching full-time for the last few days though if I was to be getting up early regularly I would have to start putting my head down earlier in the evenings. It's just that I know it will take a few hours to get to sleep and I so enjoy relaxing with first some Sudoku and then reading until 11.30 or 12.00. I have got into some bad habits in my old age. 

I was in the reception class all day again and it was a pretty good day. I'm just about getting all their names and even know which groups some of them are in. As the whole school theme this term is space one of their groups is The Stars. There's one child who every time I say "Stars go and ..... " asks "Am I a star?" so I have to reply "Yes, you are a star X....... ." which sounds really sweet. At the end of the day instead of hearing individual readers I got to read a Big Book to the class. We had talked about the usual things, which way round should I hold the book etc and then I read the title The Dinosaur Zoo. One little girl gasped in astonishment and said "How did you know that?" The perfect opportunity for me to explain that when I was a little girl I learnt all my sounds and words in phonics and that helped me read. (Not really true but never mind.) Luckily we had been learning the sounds for i, a, t and n this week so it was relevant.

After school we had a training session led by our literacy co-ordinator on working with children who are struggling with their reading. It was interesting but once it had finished I was ready to go home and didn't bother dropping in at the Co-Op first. 

On the way home I stopped briefly near Ashelford Corner for some countryside views. In the photo above Dartmoor is in the distance with the Shirwell trees in the mid-ground.