The inevitable

Scene: a (fairly new) Home School Room, February 2012

Child 1: I’ve finished

Me: Really? Oh. Well done, let me see. . . well, that’s going very nicely isn’t it C1, I can see you’ve thought of a theme. Now, this part here says ‘paragraph’ and what you’ve done is a sentence . . .

C1. <witheringly> I know. I don’t want to do a paragraph.

Me: Well, the question is partly to see how well you can continue this story with a paragraph – say three sentences or so . . .

C1. <witheringly> I know. But I don’t want to.

Me: I’d like you to please.

C1: I won’t.

Child 2: Why not C1? You would at school.

C1: This isn’t school.

C2 and Me (in chorus, oh dear): Yes it is.

C2: And Mummy’s your teacher.

C1 to me: You’re NOT the teacher.

Me: Well, I am, C1 and this is school. This really isn’t how you’d behave with your teacher or at school.

C1: I don’t care.

C2 then makes an error in her neat copy of a story she’s been writing, shouts at C1, C1 shouts back . . . how will it all end?

Well, end it did and in the afternoon we all truly did enjoy discussing a presentation on Forces (physical, rather than of personality), and drawing pictures of flying monkeys and C1 being blasted with an air cannon. All of this was based on a Royal Institution lecture we attended that was so good it remained good when selectively reprised by me some days later.

Dr Matt Pritchard, you were a star, on which we can all agree.

Royal Institution of Great Britain http://www.rigb.org