Once upon a time there was an ugly ISDN line. This ISDN line had been a good and faithful servant to his owners but he longed to be bigger and better to make his owners happier and more contented with life. He listened intently as his owners cried and screamed waiting for the e-mails to down load or the C-Beebies site to work properly. “ I wish there was something I could do”, he thought.

One day he heard a Wireless Broadband connection in the village talking about an enchanted man with magical powers who made him work faster and his owners very happy.

Mean-while his owners slogged on getting through the day screaming and waiting.

Then he heard his owners talking about the day enchanted man would visit Innerwick. he would soon change into a beautiful graceful and powerful SWAN. This was promised to be very soon. His owners were the happiest he had ever seen them.

Meanwhile time passed and the owners and ISDN waited and waited (very much like his owners trying to retrieve an attachment over 200KB) but nothing happened and soon his owners stopped talking about SWANS and went back to being cross and grumpy.

He felt like an ugly Duckling that would never grow into a beautiful SWAN. And they all continued to live unhappily ever after.  

At Innerwick after a staff brainstorm we have reviewed what we do with the children on a Friday. It has been the concern of many schools that Friday morning was wrongly viewed by some pupils and parents as not as important as the other 4 days because it was a half day. I have always felt that we could do a great deal more with our Friday.

This year we have re-vamped Fridays. We started last week by bringing the whole school together and setting them 5 challenges. The first challenge was a code to tell them where to start and what to do. After this all the activities were outdoors. With the help from 6 parents we put each group of children through a thirty minutes activity. Activity One was to decorate a tree in the school grounds. Activity Two was to give their group a name and identity and make a large badge on the playground with coloured chalks. Activity Three was to make friend ship bracelets for each other in their groups. Activity Four was to construct a letter from newspaper 1 metre high. The letters spelt out INNERWICK at the end of the activity. The children also had to make as many words as they could from Innerwick. The morning went very quickly and the children enjoyed a different dimension to their learning. The morning was organised by Mrs Lynn who had put a great deal of effort into ensuring that a productive morning of learning took place. Pupil and parental feedback on this firsst event was very positive.

This Friday the pupils are organising and hosting a Coffee morning and tabletop sale for the parents and wider community. As I speak parents and pupils are making tray baked in the Nursery Kitchen. Again 6 parents will be also helping out on the day to ensure that guests are greeted and welcomed into the school prior to receiving their coffee or tea.

Next week we hope to have the use of the Ranger service to assist in an Environmental themed morning. It is anticipated that there will be four groups and four activities. Activity One, 40-minute discovery walk around Innerwick. Activity two, direct work with Victor Lough, Countryside Ranger, Activity Three, Stripping and re-planning the raised vegetable and flowerbeds. (Each group will have its own raised bed) Activity Four, A mini-beast hunt classification and Audit of the school grounds.

I will report on how this grows in the forthcoming session.

Today 20^th August my eldest son started Primary One. It was a mixture of chaos and excitement as we left the house as a family to drop him at school. No kisses or hugs, he saw his mates and after a few photos he was off, no looking back.

At Innerwick we had 4 new primary one children but I feels as if they are well kent after each one of them spending 2 years in our excellent Nursery. The day was all too short for them and after lunch they were away home.

“Why are they only in on the morning for the first two weeks?”

I have been asked this a couple of times this year and I don’t know really the answer.

Does anyone else have any suggestions?