Artifical Snow

At last - found artificial snow in Poundland.It increases in size when watered - by one hundred fold- so keep away from mouths in case of choking etc.
.Last year was the first time I was lucky enough to learn about this wonderful resource. There it was- a  dry pile of it - sitting innocently in a water tray in a P1 class just waiting to be examined and activated!!! The rest of the room was full of other activites to do with Wintertime.
Memories flooded back of the awful experience of my Primary one when the only creative activity was playing with  green Plasticine or a lacing card.
Well anyway back to the point - as a supply  teacher going round the classes one day doing McCrone cover. It became to me obvious that the further up the school a pupil went - the less creative activities were planned by the class teacher - and I wondered why that happened.
 The P7 class were very bored and could have been  looking at interactive snowflakes - see www.zefrank.com- using the whiteboard as one of their activities for the afternoon.Another group could have made Christmas cards and one must be sure they would have preferred to experiment with the artificial snow instead of finding how many words could be made out of Winter-wonderland!!

The next few weeks will be fun because of my responsibility to do the Art at the special school while the H.M.I. are visiting. Am not worried much but spent the last few hours making a puppet called Frosty the Snowman - who will be very good at getting the attention of the children who have hearing or visual impairment. - The puppet has jingly bells on it too for good measure. That's all very well having a puppet - I can hear HMI say - but what will you do with it - well it is to engage the children in the lesson initially and to keep their attention during it.
Another activity which seemed important  to do before an HMI inspection is to print out the learning outcomes for Expressive Arts and Science   -  and to learn them off by heart. As it turns out the artifical snow ties in with the science outcomes and so maybe one should download the whole curriculum outcomes. After all - it is part of  a teacher's responsibility to promote health and well being and encourage literacy and numeracy across the curriculum. Wish me luck.