Yellow

I decided to share a few yellow things from school. I've actually got quite a bit of yellow around the house because we painting a lot of our rooms yellow. Not bright yellow like these things. A buttery colour.

This is a closeup of one of the crowns we made for the Queen for Queen's Birthday. The glue was a bit useless so I had to get the glue gun out and reattach the buttons. I always manage to burn my fingers using a glue gun, but I'm awfully fond of them.

We have been talking about colour. When I was working with individuals on another arty activity anyone spare was working on this rainbow. I have dangled the colour names off the bottom. I wanted the darker blue to be indigo, but someone didn't listen.


For your future reference, the Maori colours. Kowhai is a New Zealand native tree with beautiful yellow flowers. Kowhai is both a colour and a plant. So are tawa and karaka.

Here is the sun I drew. Most of the class helped to colour and dye it. I stapled it together with another big circle of paper, with cellophane sandwiched between. Three of my students helped to screw up newspaper to stuff it with.

Here is Ducky. It is a miracle that he still looks so good because most things get sucked or chewed eventually. The kids' cushions are on display behind. Fabric paints are awesome!

Here is the Rainbow Lorikeet that visited on Friday. His/her name is Kaz. We were all totally enchanted by it. It even poos on command so you can hold it over a bucket so that it can go to the toilet. Then you don't get crap down your back. It is only a baby and will grow bigger. A perfect end to colour week, I think!

Today I had a mad rampage in the garden, plus I rescued my Christmas lily bulbs so that I can take them to my new garden. They are expensive, so I decided they need to come with me. Plus they were all given to me by a friend. One of them always has a huge head of flowers every year. I found out why. The bulb is utterly enormous. I put them in a bucket with some soil and covered them with a damp newspaper. They don't like to dry out.

We have decided to spend Sunday mornings working on the garden at the new place, and Saturday and Sunday afternoons sorting out our world here. I really got a lot done this weekend at our current house. I hacked and slashed the boysenberries and grapes back. I pruned roses with the ruthless attitude of an expert. I weeded and snipped. I had great intentions to rake up lots of stones at our new place, but we had seven (yes, seven!!!) visitors while we were there, and didn't get much done apart from guided tours. I told Mr B we will need a big new coffee machine with all of the visitors we are getting. His current one just does two little cups at a time. So we've had a fun, very busy weekend. I'm looking forward to the next one already. XXX

Pedagogy

Pedagogy is a word that gets slung around in teaching circles by people wanting to look clever. Weird to say I've never actually had a simple explanation of what it means. Now that I've made an effort to find out I thought I would share with you.

Pedagogy is the art or science of teaching.

Golly gosh. In my case I'm not sure if the word pedagogy applies to anything I do during the day. Here is a basic rundown of what I did today:

• Morning talk (circle time) with a viewing of the photos from wacky hair day last week.
• Then we had a dance to something lively that I can't recall.
• We had a talk about Queen's Birthday and made some collaged crowns to display on the wall (they like to collage and can all put thing onto paper like glitter and buttons).
• We washed hands and then had morning tea (like a family with a focus on social skills)
• Then we put the jackets on everyone and sent them out to play for 20mins.
• When the bell rang we rounded up the students because most of them don't come in unless you retrieve them.
• Everyone went to the toilet (nappy changes etc)
• Then we rotated through art lessons, individual activities and the multisensory room.
• We went for a walk around the block because the trikes were not out.
• We came back and washed hands then had lunch.
• I had 1 hour for lunch so I ate my salad and wrote reports. The kids played outside.
• When the bell rang it was round-up time again. Then toilet.
• Then we had a shared story.
• We all trooped next door for gymnastics (in which we are actually doing massage and relaxation)
• When we came back to class I got out the instruments and we played some music.
• Everyone got their bags on and we took them to wait for their taxis.

I must say I think I am kind of getting close to needing a change of class. I've been with the severe senior group for about five years. There is a point when you would love someone to respond to a story that you are reading (listening quietly would be good, in some cases). I guess I must be incredibly patient because I've been saying the same things to the same students for such a long time, and things don't change a lot. But we do get lovely surprises, occasional super progress and lots of laughs.

So I hope that you have learned a new word today, and therefore I managed to educate someone!

Ps. Did a good job on my eating today.