Could be my last day of rest for a while

Have had a chilled Sunday. Whatsapp video called my best friend Nina and it was so lovely to catch up and also discuss  online school stuff and online NILD. We have a staff meeting tomorrow morning to finalise what we're going to do as a school. It might lean towards producing work packs that get handed to the parents on Mondays and then returned with work hopefully done on Thursdays to give out more work to be done by the following Monday. I have looked into Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams but both require online payment. We might try use email, Padlet and Zoom meetings. We just don't know how long this will all last and as my friend Nina said, we probably will have to plan for extra revision time when we eventually get back to normal as you aren't guaranteed the students will have grasped stuff (my lot already struggle to grasp things in normal class time, so this is going to be challenging). It is an opportunity to try engage with more modern ways of teaching though. It is just a fast paced learning path and you are going to have to think of a million and one things at once (more so than usual). Nina warned me that you can get bombarded with questions from students and guardians and it is best to make a central Whatsapp group so you don't have to keep repeating yourself on different fora.

So yes, with a big gulp I embark upon tomorrow. This afternoon I did some still much needed tidying up at home. I found my original birth certificate sitting on a book shelf. We had hunted high and low for it previously and I had to go get a new one from Market Square. Amazing the things you find when you do some tidying up. There's still a whole lot more to tidy unfortunately.

I then did a bit of art. Was inspired by the strelitzias in our garden which have been prolific this year. Using a technique Vanessa Hounsell showed a group of us in an impromptu art evening over Zoom, I first drew the strelitzias in the garden using a soft B pencil on tracing paper. You then take your line drawing and shade in sections to start abstracting it. You then get a fresh sheet of paper or card and go over your lines and shading on the reverse side to transfer your drawing. You can play around with your drawings and placement and then you could paint into it. I didn't feel like digging out paint and paintbrushes so opted for oil pastels. I did get some turpentine at the end though to blur and smooth the lines and shading. Started on another piece with cosmos as the focus (this time not abstract). Will have to finish that at some point.