• how to make a mobius strip

  • Yesterday, I spent the day at North Baddesley Infant School in Hampshire. It was a great day because I went there last year and so it was like coming home to old friends and I’d spent the night at a friendly B&B where I had stayed before as well. I’ve been living in impersonal hotel rooms for most of the last month so it was nice to be met by a friendly face – and I only had to drive a mile to the school!

    I worked mostly with the two year one classes. We tried to work up a bit of a story about Ricky Rocket going on holiday. His family were meant to go to the holiday planet of Shoe, but got on the wrong rocket and ended up on the Planet Goo, filled with sticky people and unmentionable smells and substances!

    Between us we wrote two versions of Ricky’s 24 hour stopover and made up Ricky Rocket style fact files about the two different planets. Some were disgustingly inventive!

    The picture shows one of the sections of the story that I worked on with a group of five children, each taking a turn to write a section of the story. It wasn’t how I thought it would turn out, but I think it looks great. One of the children began writing on my Flipchart and the rest carried on. I think it looks great. Maybe there’s a whole new print format?!

    We finished off with a mass Ricky Rocket drawing lesson in which all the children excelled themselves – well done!

    Thanks everyone for making it a wonderfully enjoyable day and great to see you all again. Keep up the good work and I hope you finish off the stories!

  • On Tuesday, I spent the morning at Westcliff Primary School, Dawlish in Devon, where gifted and talented groups from five schools met up for a workshop. I showed them my somewhat chaotic system for working out ideas.

    We were going to come up with a creation myth for an animal. Each time I do this I promise myself I will choose a safe animal and lead the group in a safe direction and come up with a safe and satisfying result. But life’s not like that – is it?

    We decided to do how snails got their shells. I set off thinking it would be relatively easy. It was not!

    We ended up with a crazy plot in which British slugs went across the Channel in borrowed sea shells, to save their french cousins from being eaten by Frenchmen!

    A Dad’s Army flavour entered the proceedings and we ended up with some very funny scenes and excellent, World War Two, Colonel Blimp type dialogue.

    As I kept telling the children, it was only a first draft of an idea that needs lots of work on it yet. Hmm… drafting and editing seem to be children’s least favourite concepts!

    Thanks for a great and funny morning chaps! Now – Forward – Advance and on to Victory!

    ps here is the youtube link to my worm eating slug video!