Rydal Penrhos Daily Notes – April 1
Week 2, day 8 – 10 pupils, 5 staff
This morning our pupils were quiet and thoughtful, working on their school set holiday tasks or making lovely cards for the NHS workers.
By the afternoon it was a different story! Mr Mcleod and Mr Sanders arrived to take over with ideas of golf and tennis in their minds; unfortunately, I had hinted in the morning that gymnastics might be on the cards. Of course, I maintained a strategic silence when the pupils were lacklustre at the teacher’s suggestions and then came out with the seemingly random, “can we do gymnastics?”
Off they set up to the hall and it only took 20 minutes (!!) for the two teachers to set out the almost Olympic standard amount of school gymnastic equipment!
The pupils stretched on the side growing increasingly concerned as more equipment was added to the mats! Towards the end of the session I went up to take photos as promised…goodness me I’m sure that the enormously heavy vaulting boxes (did we used to call these ‘horses’ when I was at school?) could have been used as extras in ‘The Great Escape’!
They could certainly hide a full-grown adult within! The pupils lined up to show me what they could do, I was severely regretting suggesting this activity at this point. There then followed a series of vaults, jumps and even a round-off from the top of the box! Amazing what small group instruction can achieve in under an hour!
The two teachers were still keen to pursue their previous plan but were now thwarted with requests for ‘board games’ and ‘Malory Towers’! They acquiesced only after the prospect of being victorious at chess and Connect 4.
This plan didn’t quite work out either and the photograph shows that pupils have been getting in quite a bit of practice at board games recently!
Enid Blyton still holds her charms over the younger generation and the new BBC adaptation of ‘Malory Towers’ is testament to this. Children love nothing more than a good school story and even more fun if it’s a boarding school and they can watch or read it curled up on a pile of cushions in a boarding school with their friends.
A quick scout of our school library revealed that we have more books by Enid Blyton have any other single author – she may be criticised for being outdated but she certainly can connect with children, even today’s high tech children.
Today showed that although children love their screen time they do also love jumping around, playing games together and snuggling up for a good story… oh, and they quite enjoy getting their own way as well don’t they Mr Mcleod and Mr Sanders!
Mrs L Davies
Head of Prep
