Friday 26th – By Sarah Joy
Our final day at Catch-Up School (also called Comfort Primary School) came all too quickly. We headed off in the morning with our bus laden with all our final lesson resources and everything else we had used over the week that will be left as donations to the school for them to continue to use.
First off in the morning was our 3 nursery classes – The Hungry Caterpillar, The Lost Coin and Dear Zoo lessons all went down a treat again, with very happy smiley children making various decorated animal finger puppets, butterfly masks and jeweled crowns. Those few nursery children who were so shy when we first arrived at the school on Wednesday all came out of their shells and it was hard to peel ourselves away from them as they showered us with hugs. All of them loved singing to us, laughing at our attempted to get quite the right hip wiggles in the dancing part!
Next up was break time though it should really have been called ‘bubble time’ today. This is because we all got out our remaining bubble wands and entertained the whole school for almost the entire half an hour! There was also more hairdressing, photo posing and dancing all around the grounds. The children also found it fascinating to watch Martyn up a ladder fixing the guttering. We heard it was quite a picture on the journey back from the hardware store as the new guttering was longer than the minibus and stuck right out the front doors too. Well done to Paul our Driver for not taking anyone out on the roads!
Our final lessons got underway and all the classes loved them. Katie, Simon and Sarah’s Team had a superb maths measuring lesson, with all the kids working out all their heights. (Thank you to Ikea for the paper tape measures!!) Next door Ryan, George and Paige had a geography lesson which culminated in making a great poster with drawings of each child holding hands around a map of the world! Lastly Helen, Beth and Sarah Joy’s class were doing all about time, with numerous paper plate/ split pin clocks being made!
All of us have been blown away by how bright and enthusiastic all the students are – They have thrown themselves into all we have done and so eager to show us what they know. It has been so great to see.
To finish off our time with each class we all decorated T-shirts. Everyone was so creative and was thrilled to parade around showing the whole team what they had designed. There was a slight improvisation needed in P5 when a few of the girls wanted to keep their t-shirts white, so instead they learnt how to do some origami with Sarah – all making a peace crane.
Leaving is always difficult on trips like this, as the team and the students have had such a brilliant few days of fun together. So instead of heading home when the school day ended, there was quite long goodbye process as the children all wanted to hug us, say thank you and ask when we are returning. We shared lots of photos and gave lots of high fives, reassuring all the children that all the resources they could still see on the bus, were being left for the school. The next hour was spent organizing these resources into different categories (Art, Maths, Geography, Stationary etc), and decorating the classrooms with all the flags and posters the children had made during the week. Meanwhile Helen was running a little training session with the teachers about the Whole Brain Approach, which went down incredibly well. All the staff at the school were very thankful for all we had done with their classes and loved the different ways we taught. We were all welcomed to come back at any time and I’m sure the whole team would love the chance to return. Our time at the Catch-Up school has been short but so very worthwhile and we are all leaving with treasured memories of the wonderful staff and children here.