One of the simple pleasures of the recent need to stay at home for extended periods has been the opportunity to watch the bird feeders and the bird bath, both of which get regular visitors, getting up to various acrobatic tricks and having no shame in their bathing techniques.

Having some shrubs and small trees around does help the birds confidence, as they can make a quick getaway if necessary to avoid local cats or occasionally, us. However, by being a quiet presence in the garden, many birds are now coming to within a metre of us, and not just the robins.
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Both the feeders and the bath are very simple; something to hold seed or more open to hold the suet balls. Our local pet shops and certainly our local Wilko or B&M are open.
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The bath is nothing more than a tray to stand a pot in. It holds water and fits the space. It doesn’t need to be special; an upturned dustbin lid will work, too, with stones to make an “island” for birds to stand safely.
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A few weeks’ ago, we had a dozen varieties of birds coming in an hour. This week, April 14th, the birds are more active in the garden picking up bits of nesting material, so we have cut some of the dry grasses to help and also put out hair that was caught in hair-brushes.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will expect to see the parent birds coming regularly to the feeders to collect particularly the suet, if last year is anything to go by, to feed themselves, as a quick snack while out looking for insects, but also their young, eventually coming back in family groups for a few weeks before they disperse.

It’s very simple, but good fun.

​Online identification is possible, if you’re not confident in naming the birds that come., We’ve had blue tits, great tits, long tailed tits and an occasional coal tit, sparrows and starlings, robins, blackbirds, nuthatches, greenfinches and goldfinches. The wren makes an occasional appearance, as do the thrushes and jays. Fortunately, the magpies have been quieter this year, although they are impressive birds.

More blogs on using the natural world.
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Observation; get them to look
Creating Nature Detectives
50 things to Do; Thinking Locality
​A Sense of Place; naming things

The Wildlife Trusts have a junior section; Watch.
https://www.wildlifewatch.org.uk/
Or there’s the RSPB
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/identify-a-bird/

As someone with a couple of lifetimes in education, from time to time I look back on my career and wonder how I managed to maintain myself through the inevitable ups and downs that life offers; making time for opportunities, or coping with life events.

The newly married probationer had time to play a lot of sport, sometimes mid-week and twice at weekends, plus fit in home life, which entailed DIY on the house. There was time for a local amateur dramatic group, too.

Time stretched, but time was our own for a few years and then along came children, so time altered, to cater for the new life. Sport went on one of the weekend days and midweek got more difficult, to be replaced by crawling around the floor and immersion in parenting. Carrying children in backpacks became de facto weight training. Camping replaced hotels and B&Bs, but it still allowed holidaying.
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Learning to play the guitar and local wildlife combined some elements of parenting, singing silly songs with the children and taking groups to different places to discover wild areas. A link with a local building society helped to create poetry and art competitions. Busyness continued apace. Somehow, post grad studies, waking at 5am to do a couple of hours before children woke, fitted in.
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As children grew a little older and a bit more independent, time became available to participate in a local folk dance group as percussionist/bodhran player, with weekend camping trips for festivals, so family had some fun as well and met some new friends.

Headship was a bit more challenging to find time, especially at the start, but summer camping then included trips to France to visit friends who had emigrated, so gave a couple or three weeks of head space. It also meant a continuing music link, playing in the Radio France final of the Truffe de Perigueux.

Three years later, a diagnosis of breast cancer caused a radical rethink, and, to everyone’s surprise, resulted in buying a French hovel; a continuous life project. It was buying “headspace” a rebalancing, time out of normal life, which continues, even after bereavement. The escape to the country made real. The simplicity of practical DIY projects, of coppicing, pollarding and haymaking, of collecting hedgerow fruits, or eating a meal outdoors are underrated pastimes.
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Looking back over this, the notion of “headspace” is a common factor. We all live busy lives, with the busyness occasionally as a result of an inability to say “no” to anyone. The inevitable juggling and time stretching is often fine until an unexpected event tilts the balance, to a point where we feel that we are not coping.
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Some situations allow for stepping back, letting others to take some of the weight, using the collegiality of family or a work team to allow a period of rebalancing. Knowing yourself is key; knowing when to step away might be a necessary action; hopefully short term.
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Pandemic pensées
We’re living in very strange times. The world’s closed down. People are at home, some working, some furloughed, some looking after themselves or others, whose lives may be risked by catching the current virus.
Teachers are working really hard to maintain some elements of normality among the altered reality and, in different households, the capacity to support children with any areas of learning might be strained. Teacher capacity to identify and support individuals with specific help will also be constrained.
Children have been put into a situation where they are distance learning. Even as an adult, this can be a challenge, in motivation, resourcefulness and perseverance. Frustrations that might be expressed in normal times about “not understanding” what is expected may be exaggerated further by the expectations of a number of hours each day devoted to “schoolwork”.
This tweet, posted by an Aussie teacher made me stop and think.
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Teachers may well be sending home work that challenges the child’s ability to conceptualise what is being expected. If we look at maths as a separate area, in this case, a teacher or other adult might seek to unpick the problem and exemplify what is being asked by the use of supportive diagrams or with reference to physical materials.
But… home is not school, so the resources may not be available.
That, in itself, set off a train of thought and took me back to my first classroom, which I inherited with resources that were either twenty years old, or non-existent. There was a need to create, devise or collect resources that would support counting, matching and grouping. So visits to the beach might mean picking up shells to bring home, boil and clean to take into school. Autumn meant collecting conkers. I did try marbles, at one time, but, for some reason, they kept going missing… It soon became clear that anything could become a counting aid, so newsletter requests to parents helped with a variety of materials and the local sweet shop was a source of large, clear jars.
I thought it might be an idea to consider how to make resources from very simple materials that might be available in homes, provide useful activities in their development, then be useful in specific maths activities.
Let’s start with counting.
It’s possible that families are getting through quite a lot of cereal, or other boxed foods. The cardboard can be used as free base materials. A ruler, marker pen, pencil and scissors are needed.

Open out the boxes and cut the larger pieces. Keep bits, in case you want to make more at some stage.
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Measure and rule a 1cm grid, or larger, 2cm, if you are worried for a child’s dexterity, using as much of the card as possible. Identify a couple of 10*10 grids, as 100 squares, where you can cut 10 squares into “rods”, leaving the remainder to become “ones”, “singles” or “units”.

Drawing a 3cm by 4cm grid can create a series of rectangles that become number cards. If you have enough, numbering to 100 is very useful to challenge later learning.
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Cut out the various pieces.
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Combining the counting numbers with the cut out counters can begin to develop thinking mathematically, matching numbers, showing these in physical form.

Challenges can then develop, linking physical, diagrammatic and abstract.
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A very simple activity that can be very effective in supporting rapid calculation could be called race to or from the flat. This can be an extension from making the resources above, with the addition of one or more dice.
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As long as you have made the materials above and have some dice, this can be developed to cater for a variety of needs.

The rules of each game are simply described.
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·         Decide whether it’s a race to or from the flat (100 square). Decide whether, when the dice are thrown, the numbers are added together (any number of dice) or multiplied (two or three dice?).
·         Dienes materials available tin the centre of players, plus dice appropriate to the needs of the group.
·         Each child takes turns to throw the dice and calculate the sum or product.
·         This amount is then taken from the general pile and placed in front of the child. The calculation can be recorded eg 3+4=7. This can provide a second layer of checking.
·         If playing race from the flat, the child starts with ten ten rods, then takes an appropriate amount from these.
·         Subsequent rounds see pieces added to the child’s collection; recorded as needed, eg round 2, 5+2=7 (7+7=14; the teacher should see one ten and four ones)
·         The first child to or from the flat is the winner.


Altering the number of dice alters the challenge.