Changeable Weather.

School was an absolute nightmare today so for the time being I shall be focusing on family, home and garden.

We are currently under the edge of a weather front so one moment we have extremely heavy rain and the next bright sun.

At the time I took this picture it was lovely and warm though the air was somewhat pungent due to the liberal muck spreading that has been going on. That's farming for you.

Little Boxes Everywhere.

We had heavy rain in the night which continued on and off through the day. Driving up the hill in the morning there was steam coming off the road and the low clouds were reaching down in tendril towards the valleys.

During the day it dried up enough to so that the children could go out to play though we did have some heavy downpours. My afternoon was spent on PPA time glued to my lap top working on a million entries for the on-line tracker. I think I've ticked all the necessary boxes but I shall put off starting checking each of the end of term reports until tomorrow. There are apparently 51 boxes I have to check on each one!! Right now all my stress is directed towards tomorrow morning when I shall be having a lesson observation followed by an hour's performance management meeting. I've chosen to teach a literacy lesson continuing the work we have been doing based on the story of Perseus and Medusa. Once that is over and I've checked all the reports I can focus on planning a fun Arts' Week with the children spending all our time on art projects big and small.

Sports Day At Last.

We finally had our Sports Day today after 2 cancellations due to the wet weather. Because a parent complained that we cancelled the last time in the morning (even though the weatherman accurately predicted that it would pour with rain at lunchtime) we held off making a decision until lunchtime. We had light showers and sunshine but we went ahead anyway. We have a mixture of flat races for each class and team activities where each team is made up of children of all ages and the activities graded for the different age groups so everyone has a go until the whistle blows and you move onto the next activity with points being totalled to find out the winning team. 

On the way home I always enjoy watching the changing palette of the wildflowers. Right now the Rosebay-willow-herb (fire weed) is blazing in great swathes alongside the roads while many of the other flowers have set seed and are more muted browns and golds. The broken telegraph pole has been repaired and more and more wind turbines are sprouting from the next hill top. Now it's back to those reports as I've been told that I have to fill in everything on the pupil tracker asap. Just as I'm beginning to get to grips with the Tracker I'll stop using it as I return to part-time teaching.

Sun!

It has been an fantastically beautiful day. The advantage of being in a hut at school is that we have windows on 2 sides and with doors at either end we were able to let the cooling breeze blow through the room. Uunfortunately it also set many papers flapping and clattering but it was worth it. As it was so warm and the weather is set to change soon, possibly tomorrow I rearranged my timetable so that we spent most of the day outside. A game of T-ball (simplified rounders/baseball), a story in the Secret Garden and time to explore the mini beasts there too.

All evening this magnificent grey horse has been making silly noises as it his first time in this field. I went up to see what was going on and he looked positively gigantic beside the little Exmoor ponies. He came over and said hello to me making me miss my days of regular riding and teaching but even if my back wasn't dodgy it is very expensive to ride these days. I think it is about £40 for an hour's lesson now. I can remember paying 7/6 when I was a youngster!

Back home, after running Speedy back to the vets for his brief post-op check (all satisfactory), I would have loved to spend the whole evening outdoors but there were those reports to work on. For once the Tracker has made things easier and it has been relatively easy to set the new targets which then appear on the reports. One more evening should do it. I still have to do some school work before I can rest, no peace for the wicked.

Sunny Sunday.

It has been a beautiful day again today. Unfortunately I had to spend a lot of time hunched over the PC first doing my planning and then more work on the reports. I did a quick tally and on each report there are 39 boxes to be individually thought about and filled for each child. That's not counting the precis for each term and the targets for the core subjects. No wonder it is taking so long. This lovely weather will probably be around for the next 3 weeks and then as soon as our summer holiday starts it will revert to miserable grey weather. I may sound obsessed with the weather but last year I kept a record and over the 6 weeks of our summer holiday we had just 4 good days. Peter went rowing early in the morning so we were able to go out later for a walk at Mortehoe. We went along the track to Bull Point before turning and heading back right around Morte Point.

This is one of the older benches along the way. I stopped here to get a stone out of my shoe.

It didn't feel too hot as there was a cooling breeze.

As we approached Morte point the coast guard helicopter circled and then hovered over the rocks at the highest point.

We saw a winch man going down but we couldn't find out if they were rescuing someone or simply on a training exercise. When we got round the point we could see the beach at Woolacombe was full and the car park at Putsborough was also packed.

Back home I carried on working on the PC before finally taking a break to pick a few more lbs of blackcurrants. Peter cooked up another barbecue and we had a pleasant meal outside. Now it's back to the grindstone for another week (or three).

School Summer Fayre.

Only 1 photo tonight as Blogger seems to be playing up. It has been a nice sunny day, perfect for our school Summer Fayre. We went along and I did my turn at manning the coconut shy stall. Everyone went away happy as they paid £1 and threw balls until a coconut fell (or was assisted) down. There weren't so many stalls this year but there were plenty of people around and they seemed to be enjoying themselves. I treated myself to an ice cream form the Hockins' van. They make real ice cream with cream and natural ingredients, not the fluffed up artificial stuff you normally get from an ice cream van. Before we went into town I did some proof reading and spell checking of reports as well as adding grades for effort, attainment and progress and managed to get half of them done. My next stressful event is being 'performance managed' on Thursday which includes a full lesson observation and an hour's discussion afterwards. It will be a big sigh of relief when that is over.

Rain or possibly thunderstorms keeps threatening so I have cut all the grass even though I'm feeling quite tired. At least that job is now out of the way.

Friday's Post.

Last night's blogging was interrupted by a power cut, it was only brief but as a precaution the pcs were unplugged for the rest of the evening. Friday was looking good, a whole morning in the staffroom sorting out final inputting onto our on-line pupil tracker followed by a relaxed afternoon in class, handwriting followed by Golden Time. Instead it turned into a frantic nightmare. Half-way through the morning I found out that I had missed out large sections on the tracker so that was more work piling up. Then at 11.30 we were told that our end of year data needed to be on the tracker NOW. Got that done before rushing into town at lunchtime as I had to go to the bank. Had just settled into class with the children when a series of messages came about missing data. I thought that maybe in my rush I had forgotten to press the save button but then I got suspicious. When I checked the tracker using my log-in the data was all there but for some reason the office couldn't pick it up on their log in-so I had to write it all down for them. For something that is supposed to make life easier the on-line tracker is generating hours of work.

Life in the countryside is also quite frantic at the moment. In our current dry spell the contractors are out cutting and transporting silage. Someone must have come out of a field too sharply and snapped this telegraph pole right off.  It's a mile away from home and not our phone line so I don't think it had anything to do with last night's power cut.

The distant hills are the cliffs on the North Devon coast.
It had been another sunny day ending in a beautiful evening so my evening stroll in the garden turned into a walk up the hill and then along the road to Ashelford Corner. It was simply too nice to sit at home.

For anyone living in the UK The Co-op (once Somerfields) continues to be the best place to buy reduced price food. While the other big supermarkets take off 20p or 50p at the Co-op they regularly reduce perishables by 50-75% at round 5.00. Yesterday I bought cherries, blueberries, pears, chicken breast fillets, lamb's liver, yoghurt, lime cheese cakes and coronation chicken all for 25% of the usual price and some of them had been on special offer in the first place. We get to eat really nice food at a reasonable price and our freezer is once again filled to the brim for when the youngsters come to visit. My al fresco breakfast this morning was oats & sunflower seeds with blueberries and yoghurt.

I let the kitty out for a run in the garden last night which he loved, whizzing round the place excitedly. He may end up being called Speedy unless we think of something better. He has been spending the day in the conservatory and yesterday when I returned home there had been a bit of mayhem inflicted on my puzzle with some pieces even looking chewed! Never mind, it was soon fixed and now I put the trays over the vulnerable sections.