Rydal Penrhos Daily Notes – May 5

Day 32 – 16 pupils, 7 staff

There has been an interesting, positive side effect to all of the remote home schooling. Although pupils are interacting positively and enthusiastically with the online lessons, they are also beginning to subconsciously associate screen time with doing school work more than with playing computer games.

I think it is true to say that parents perform a huge balancing act each day in trying to allow their children access to screen time for gaming and watching TV…as a headteacher I know that it is one of the main points of tension in families; it is often the first privilege to be banned when there has been an incident of poor behaviour from a child.

We wonder if our children will ever choose playing outdoors over screen time indoors!

Well, it’s happened! All-day yesterday the sun shone and pupils asked, “when can we go outside?” Or exclaimed sulkily, “ Why can Sebby and Oliver play outside and we have to go on the computers?”

Wait! Did I hear correctly? Pupils want to abandon computers and play outside?

After explaining that Sebby and Oliver are in Pre-School, and don’t need to do lessons, it seems that the world has turned around.

Instead of saying to pupils that if they finish their work they can have ten minutes on the computer, we are now saying that when they finish their work they can have ten minutes outside, playing with the scooter boards and the hoops!

The human mind is an interesting machine… we always crave what we don’t seem to be able to have. Now that pupils are being asked to use a computer for large parts of the day, they no longer find it as exciting and they crave to go outside or to play jigsaws or to create games with the model cars and the wooden railway set!

What a good job that children have adults to help them get the balance right!

Mrs L Davies

Head of Prep