The Egg Man ... and hats!

I spent the morning over with Natalie at Upper Primary.  Natalie is in charge of the teacher mentors, and since the school is changing over to the Cambridge system, there is a stack of work to do.  We had tried to get the photos last week, but the first classroom we went to the teacher was absent, and so she ended up teaching a maths lesson on integers – and I stayed to photograph and assist where I could.  So this week our first visit was to the art room, where the class was in the process of making hats. 

This is where cardboard – in this case, the packaging for a computer – ends up recycled as a variety of hats  (continuing my ‘Recycling’ theme from yesterday). The kids are learning about world climate in geography (and every other subject is linked to this theme in some way) so in art they are making hats, and the idea is that they need to be able to explain what climate the hat would be used in, and if they were making a real hat, what materials could they use to make it etc etc etc.  So there was the remains of the computer box, as well as a variety of newspapers and magazines all being recycled into hats, and some of the kids certainly had plenty of imagination!  I think we spent longer in this class than we should have – we were both enjoying ourselves immensely.

Our next class was English, and the kids were learning about different types of nouns.  Instead of the class being set out in rows, and each child sitting on their own, the classrooms are being changed over gradually.  The new layout is for about 4-6 kids to be in their own pods (desks put together like cheese segments) and each pod is a different colour, ie, desks are either yellow, blue, red or green.  So the teacher does the teaching bit on the blackboard still, and when it comes to assignment work, the kids all learn to work in a group so they can learn to discuss their different ideas, learn to listen to other viewpoints and learn to decide on a single outcome.  Well, that’s the theory anyway.  Some groups of course are better than others at it.  And you can see future leaders and politicians – and bludgers - even at this young age!!! 

After the teacher mentor meeting, we had a quick visit to the Upper Primary PE class and then it was time for me to head back to the Lower Primary.  I had just started to download the images when someone realised that the egg man was there, and it would be good to get some photos.  Augustine (the “egg man”) delivers the eggs on his bicycle.  All 600 of them.  He had the eggs in cardboard trays – 30 eggs per tray and there were 20 trays.  Tied securely with a long piece of rubber.  On the bike rack.  He cycles for only 20 minutes from his place (where he has his 400 chooks) to our school, but when he is delivering to other shops, it’s a longer cycle.  And since we “only ordered 600 eggs” this week, he had a small load.  There are times when he delivers 1,200 eggs – in the one go – on his pushbike.  Zoë, are you getting any ideas yet???????  So of course I enjoyed this unexpected diversion taking those photos and learning about his way of life.

The rest of the day was quite normal really – staff portraits in Lower Primary and some time to finally download and label some of them.  Today it’s been quite hot again, and one of the gardeners was out mowing the lawns again.  In a week its amazing how much the grass has grown, and when he finished they looked wonderful.  Then at about 4pm you noticed the change and you could smell the rain coming.  The distant thunder, and the smell of the rain, was great.  Then it rained for about 20 minutes and we were back to sunshine again.

After work, I headed over to spend a couple of hours with Gemma again.  This always goes way too quickly - but after a bad start for me to the day, it was great to spend a couple of hours back in the "travel world".

At Bondi tonight we had a full kitchen - it was Stephen's turn to cook and we were treated to a 3 course dinner:  starters of biscuity bits with cheese and salami; yorkshire puddings, roast spuds, beans, mushroom & onion gravy and meat and then his version of banana split which was a banana, frozen raspberries (he didn't think about defrosting them), ice cream and chocolate sauce!  I think he was trying to impress his girlfriend (who was also there) and we were the lucky beneficiaries.

Hats - a bit of imagination, an old computer carton, a pair of scissors, paper, ribbon, glue (there is no paint available - yet) and hey presto, a hat!  The smile usually seems to come with it   ...

and on the recycling theme, here is the remains of the computer box with some of the hats from this class and a few finished hats from another class

Isn't this one priceless?  The sunglasses are an integral part of the hat, not an afterthought.

If you have your own chooks, this is how you deliver the eggs.  The road here just outside the school gates is really good, but apparently Augustine never arrives with omlettes ...

As it started to rain this afternoon

these kids were daring each other to go out into it.  I didn't think they would, but then the tennis ball they were playing with accidentally escaped down the steps and so this girl drew the short straw