I’m sure Thursday is the children’s favourite day of the week. I often get asked the question ‘Is Vanya going to be here today?’ But ‘here’ of course means ‘virtually here’! The enjoyment is real and the experiences have been varied and all very interesting. This week’s activities include photographing the room that was made the previous week, writing a little bit about history, drawing a skeleton picture of an object/scene and discussion time with Vanya.

The class was broken into four groups and I gave each group one of the four activities to begin with. One group began taking photos. For this activity a sheet of white paper, a torch, a camera and of course the cardboard room was needed. Vanya explained to the children that the torch could be used to create shadows. The children experimented with this and each took a photo of their room.

Another group took a sheet of paper each and either answered the question ‘What is history? or wrote about what it might have been like to be a child going to the old school in Ardfert years ago. This activity proved to be somewhat challenging for some children. They worked in pairs so that made it a bit easier.

A third group took a sheet of acetate each and a marker, they focused on one corner/wall of the classroom and drew what they saw. They then changed the marker colour and drew what they imagined to be behind what they were looking at. With this activity a number of children asked me what would be inside that press door or behind that wall. This showed the need by some children to get the ‘right’ answer instead of just using their imagination. Maybe some more development on this sort of activity might be beneficial.

The fourth group spoke to Vanya.