Peace - at a price?

As today was Red Nose Day, we all went to school wearing a red top and paid our pound for the privilege. The children were a bit confused as to why I was paying since, as they pointed out, I can wear a red top any day I like, but I always like to enter into the spirit of it (and at that point, all I'd done was buy a couple of noses).

BTW, is it just me, or are this year's gloriously large foam noses really... noxious? I love the way they grow, and I love the fact that since they aren't hard plastic they don't chaff or collect condensation on the inside (TMI? Sorry!) but when A and I put ours on last week, we both found them to smell really strongly of chemicals. Bleurgh!

Anyway, I digress.

Today, because of an absence, I sat with one or two children I don't usually get to sit with during extended writing. I didn't need to coax them, just gently reassure them that they could write on their own. There was a whole different feel to the lesson as they wrote their own traditional tales and they wrote quietly for around 50 minutes, with a quick "brain break" in the middle to help re-energise them. One table was slower to settle (big personalities who can't always keep their noses out of other people's business and space!) but on the whole I was really impressed with their stamina. However only two children had finished their writing by playtime.

During the assembly, which a group of Y6 girls had pulled together to tell us all about the aims of Comic Relief, The Y6 teacher told us how she had challenged her Year 6s - for every child with full marks in that morning's mental maths test, she would donate £1. Flushed with this, and knowing that trying to carry on extended writing after playtime and an assembly is usually on the tortuous side, I similarly challenged my children - £1 for every child who could sit and carry on writing without talking to other children, and £2 a head for the fussy group. Only 4 children couldn't contain it during this extra session, so I am donating £28 to Comic Relief in their honour.

I am so proud of them!

And it was blissfully quiet...