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Party
Posted on Mar 20, 2014Miss Susanna’s lunch bunch is nothing if not fun. This week she made an attempt at a mini-project on spring. With the London temperature close to zero, the children were less than impressed and decided to put the popcorn they had made (to represent blossom) to better use. One sought out reels of coloured ribbon, and the rest laid the table with plates and glasses of water. Once the entire area had been festooned with satin streams, the children partied. They talked and laughed and drank their water and declared, to a person, that it was the best party to which they had ever been.
Which all goes to show that much as the one year old prefers the wrapping to the wrapped, so the grand project is no match for water, ribbons and joie de vivre.
Tears of happines
Posted on Mar 25, 2013One of the more important skills that young children need to acquire is the ability to treat their friends kindly, to share and cooperate with them. To help with this, the teachers will model behaviour, as two of them did this week to demonstrate that being kind to another can lead to happiness.
Miss Ruthie played a child who was sad because her friend would not play with her and Miss Karin played a child who offered to be her friend and to play with her. Miss Felicity, to reinforce the modelling, suggested to the children that happiness can come both from someone being kind and also from the act of being kind to another.
At the end of this playlet, a boy said: “Miss Felicity, I’ve got water running down my cheeks”. Indeed he had: tears were pouring from the little boy’s eyes, without his really understanding why.
Exoskeleton
Posted on Aug 18, 2012Never let it be said that young children don’t pay attention.
Una, aged two, and an Iverna Gardens pupil, is in the hospital waiting room, awaiting her scan. In the room are other people, some of whom are concerned that the unpredictable nature of the average two year old may make their already difficult day even more difficult. Others have faith in Una’s mother who has spotted the teddy bear, and the scanned image of the teddy bear’s insides which, unsurprisingly, show the teddy to be filled with soft, squeezy stuff. Ever keen to improve Una’s mind, she explains that the image shows teddy’s insides and that the scan Una is shortly to have will show her insides, in fact her bones because people have skeletons inside them rather than soft, squeezy stuff. At the mention of the word skeleton, Una looks up at her mother and, aware that sometimes parents don’t know quite as much as they pretend, says, with a lovely lisp, “Some people have skeletons on the outside”. Whether the rest of the waiting room recognized the lack of faith emanating from Una’s mother as she asked “Really? Who?”, they were, to a person, astonished at the answer: “Lobsters!”
Summer School surprise
Posted on Jul 26, 2012Miss Emily is fortunate in having an older sister who loves her. This comes in handy when the lure of the Isle of Skye proves more potent than the first day of Summer School! As a result, Sam arrives bright and bouncy on Monday morning and is introduced to the children as Miss Emily’s sister. Most of the children take this with equanimity. But one little boy (let us call him James) is not prepared to countenance a universe without Miss Emily in it. For him, Sam is Miss Emily, just a bit funny looking. Tuesday arrives and James busies himself all day making togas and boats and practising his discus throwing. He makes no comment when his dad arrives to pick him up but when he gets home he flings himself at his mum and says: “Mummy, Mummy, it’s all OK. Miss Emily has turned back into herself again!” No amount of persuasion by Mum would persuade James that Sam had been anything other than a funny looking Miss Emily!