The teachers at Montgomery School in Hohne, Germany, know how to enjoy Friday afternoons. They have a “corridor challenge” friday lunchtime. I had been threatened with having to do a lassoing demonstration, but in the end it turned out to be balloon modelling and much fun was had by all – especially the bemused children that wandered past!

I had great fun last week storytelling in the mornings and drawing in the afternoons with KS1 and foundation. It was fascinating to see years 1 and 2 together doing the same drawing. There is such a developmental variation at the age.

some drawings were amazing and showed a child who was used to drawing. Others were hard to decipher but with a bit of work, you can see that all the lines are there, just in a different style and not necessarily all in the same order!

It was great to have Alan Durant with me for the two weeks in Germany. we had the evenings to put the world to rights and work out what is wrong with publishing today!

Army schools are fascinating. The children come and go. There is no cohort of children moving through the school. They also have mums and dads going off to war zones, which must be unsettling for the children and the school as a whole, especially if most of the children are from the same regiment.

It was wonderful working with small groups, doing the wake and shake after assembly, getting to know some of the characters in the school, that I rarely do, when just visiting for a day.

Many thanks to all the teachers, from whom I have learned lots of new crowd control tricks! and many thanks to the children, all of whom worked very hard on their drawings, which I never got to photograph!

Here’s a selfie of me being run over by a tank instead!