Page 71 - She's One Crazy Lady!

at the piano, offering them nods of approval and encouragement. In bounces Mr Blobby and with a sudden swoop, pushes Lesley, ‘Mrs Bonham’, off her piano stool to take over, music sheets and stands flying everywhere. Inside my costume I was in fits of laughter but carried on bashing random notes in true Les Dawson style with one hand whilst wildly conducting with the other. The children’s reaction? They carried on singing!! They were told there would be a visitor. We trained our children well at Whitefriars!
I was always interested in the
world of work and how children
could learn from industry and what
industry could do to support Primary
Education. I applied for a year’s secondment to do the Honours part of my B.Ed. degree and to study the world of work. Part of the brief was to work with local primary schools to evaluate how art was taught and which methods schools used to bring in cross-curricular activities. Additionally, I had to seek the support of local companies to spend time in their workplaces to see how teachers
could incorporate industry into the curriculum. It was an incredible year. Not only were my experiences enhanced, but my eyes were also opened wide to the potential of taking children out more into the real world. At the McVities factory in Ashby-de-la- Zouch, I followed the story of a Hobnob biscuit from beginning to end and I can assure you there is nothing better than a fresh chocolate hobnob biscuit from the production line! I went in to engineering companies to look at ‘pattern’, to a shoe factory to look at design, and to packaging factories to look at manufacturing boxes and the printing of cards and other items. Dave Marsh, my table tennis and tennis associate, who worked at Chapman’s Packaging in Wellingborough, helped us enormously to set up a superb ‘real-life’ project with my children when I returned to school, called ‘Card Capers’, whereby the children created their own company to design, make, package and sell Christmas cards and printed tea towels, with all profits from the sales going to a charity of their choice – Kettering General Hospital Children’s ward. It really was a cross-curricular project
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