St Charles, 03.03.21 & 04.03.21

Wednesday 3 March 2021 Y3/4 and Y1/2

“Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain” – Homer Simpson.

I need to write the blog on the day or else the next day’s events push it out.

Thursday 4 March

Diary entry for 4 March 1906 by Edith Holden, author of Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady:

 “Glorious sunshine. First warm day of Spring.  All the skylarks up and singing in the blue……Everywhere birds were very active and such a chorus of voices from every hedge and tree!”

There are some similarities between now and then – mainly that the sparrows were making a racket in the hawthorn bushes and, looking at other entries round about this time, the weather seems broadly much the same.  I told the children that my mum and I got this book from Marks and Spencer’s, way back in the 1970s (although the book has since had a digital revival) and I remember when I was about 10 years old having a brief flirtation with nature journaling.  It didn’t last long!  We talked about the difference between making a drawing of something and taking a photo and how you can get to know a thing very well if you have to look at it closely to try to reproduce it.    A couple of the children were very interested in the book and enjoyed flicking through the pages and talking about what they saw.  Some of the children decided to draw leaves and label and date their pictures; one girl ‘aged’ her drawing so it looked more like the book; and others just decided to draw random trees or houses from their imagination.   From the rarefied air of Edwardian ladies, we went forward to the present day and two or three children, collecting litter, terrorised us by waving round a black bag of dog poo on the end of one the pickers!  That’s not going in anyone’s nature diaries.  Others planted some willow, in the hope that it takes root as easily as everyone says and we can eventually have a ‘crop’ of willow for use in various projects.  We checked the sand tray for footprints but it showed no trace of any animal visitors.  One group, who like to set up a camp most weeks, worked on their dragging sledge idea.  Despite my offers to help them make a travois, they continued unaided, gave up and then moved onto trying to make a water hole.  This digging led to the ‘discovery’ of clay and so their focus switched again and the clay began to be mined and stock-piled in their shelter.  We can use that clay for something next time.  There was some ‘risky’ play using the decking planks which were strung up on the oak tree and tentatively used as a slide.  The children tried to make the decking slippier by pouring water on and found it didn’t work.   They amended and revised their creation to make it better in terms of sliding, and safer by being more stable – it was risk/benefit analysis in action.  Fed up of not being able to slide the way they wanted, they dismantled it and made a see saw instead.  They were learning lots about the physics of forces today by just doing and working things out for themselves.  Hopefully they will apply that practical knowledge when they come to study friction and fulcrums.  Physics was again very much evident as we finished off with a tug of war – Y5 versus Y6 - which was an unequal contest in terms of numbers but one which both sides were nonetheless determined would take place.  Y5 did indeed win but Y6 let go of the rope and the Y5s went down like dominoes.  We had to stop there regrettably because the excitement was uncontainable and my risk/benefit analysis was showing risk in the ascendancy.