Thursday 5th June - the ponisettia that

that wants to live;

I've killed many a poinsettia in my time. Sometimes I've had what looks like a whole battalion of them lined up on parade at the end of the autumn term; poinsettias, biscuits and chocolates were favourite 'teacher presents' (and I much preferred them to bath bombs, soaps and scented candles).

One by one the red leaves (bracts?) drop off...

This was one of the tiny weeny ones in a tiny weeny pot, and it stood no chance. 

All that was left was a stick. The pot got left on a windsill pending clearing up. Last week I was about to throw it out, when I noticed the merest possibility of growth on it. Someone, maybe me, must have absent-mindedly watered it from time to time.

Now it has tiny leaves! Who knows, this might be 'the one that survived'.

Knitting has happened. I'm going to name the cowl 'taking the rough with the smooth'. Or 'as you like it'.

It's a sort of mindless knitting - for zoning out - for calm, as an alternative to free cell. As opposed to a more complex pattern requiring concentration and accuracy,  where mistakes will spoil the final effect.

Music

Jardins sous la pluie, by Debussy. An obvious choice, considering the weather today.

I listened to maybe 10 versions before choosing this one. Some were too loud, some too spiky. Older recordings tended to be awash with too much pedal...

 I spent a great half term teaching impression in music to a year 5/6 class. We'd done a lot on using instruments expressively, and creating geaphic scores, so they were ready for the challenge. First we listened to extracts of this piece, noticing where fragments of melody emerge from the overall texture, like half-seen summerhouses or statues, and looked at pictures which were impressionist rather than exact drawings. 

The next week, they came in to find the classroom set up for watercolour painting! The task was to create an impression of the music using watercolours - for example creating a pale wet background wash, and then adding stronger colours to suggest trees, flowers, buildings seen through the rain.

Once the pictures were dry, they used them as graphic scores to compose their own 'jardins sous la pluie', working in small groups and combining their ideas. It was such  fun, and the children really enjoyed the whole process and treated the whole topic with great imagination and thoughtfulness.