What a brilliant week I had last week at the Grammar School at Leeds. This is the second time I've worked with the Junior School, but whereas last time I visited for five separate days right across a month, this time I was there for a full week Monday to Friday. And it really made a difference. By Friday I felt that I was part of the furniture! The children were amazing, and so engaged in what I asked them to do. And the staff were brill - cakes, coffee, crosswords in the staffroom, and really involved in the workshops that I ran. GSAL is an extremely welcoming school, and one that I'd love to return to. They also seemed to like my book, judging by the amount of people wandering up to my hastily arranged 'bookstall' in the playground on Friday afternoon. My favourite (and most bizarre!) moment of the week was when I asked some of the children to write a Riddle about a sporting object. I read out a couple of mine and asked the children to guess what object I'd written about. Guesses included such things as 'shuttlecock' , 'cricket ball, 'football.' Then one lad at the front put up his hand. 'Yes?' I asked. 'Squirrel,' said the young man, confidently. 'Pardon?' I replied, I thought you said squirrel.' 'I did,' said the boy. 'It's a squirrel.' That led to a rather interesting discussion about where and how you might find a sport that involved a squirrel as a sporting object!
