I have once again recorded what Helena and her friend got up to during the school day and thought about my role.. I do this time sample to see what the kids are up to as sometimes they seem like moths drawn to new lights or bees flitting around here and there never landing on anything. My question is whether or not they actually concentrate on anything and what it is that interests them, can I see any schema.

9am- they are on the couch reading their own books, this has never happened before and didn’t last long….

9:15- they have gone outside, climbed a tree and are writing a list of stuff they have want to do for points – aka getting money to go to the dairy or restore (charity shop) which I rule out..

9:30- they go and get Helena’s collection of lollies from last time

9:45- and something caused me/them to get our bag of no longer useable felt tips to pull apart.. this lasts an hour

11am- and they have relocated to our outside art table and are painting/drawing with felt tip inners and water… this lasts a bit over 30mins and the conversation is all “on task” peppered with look at this, when you do this etc. Science.

11:45- and they have finished and we are interrupted by the postie dropping my teaching certificate off

12- and the rats are out of their cage, and the kids are eating lollies

12:15- and they have relocated to the Pod with the rats. Helena is doing something with the dolls house, or is it a rat house

they are in the Pod for the next hour and a half, I believe they had lunch.

this is a detective test for a soft toy dog: To recognise people in disguise. The dog told a joke about the animal in the picture then either Helena or her friend would laugh and the dog had to work out who had laughed and circle the name. The dog they decided did not get them all right….

1:45- they are scrubbing the mud they used as chalk off the clean patio? thing.

2- killing aphids in the garden

2:15- they are back in the Pod

2:30- now there is a fort made of wool insulation on the floor of the pod (they jump on it)

2:45- they are on Helena’s bunk and H is reading them Geronimo

3- it’s rained and they are hiding out in the car (away from me)

3:15- and they are still in the car and Helena is reading her friend the story she wrote

Their focus is on their conversation, sometimes it’s task related but mostly not, it’s a story, they move about from place to place talking, it was all about relationships… one of those talky games where there is a story, characters and plot. They can’t even always remember after what the story was… It so isn’t what they are physically doing, the doing is just the scenery to the vivid stuff in their heads.

It appears my role is too blow my top about mess – the bits of plastic, some sharp, getting everwhere, and at one point calling H an idiot, she was being an idiot… but still, we did end up having an interesting discussion on the lack of merit of me calling her an idiot. In between painting the fence I put the kibosh on lollies, going to a charity shop, and possibly some other things too… I am sometimes jealous of their lives.