Ezio

Saturday night gave me an opportunity to go back to Academy 3 to watch Ezio in action. I first heard of them in January when my colleague from work invited me along to hear them. He knows I play guitar so thought I would be interested in their music. This time though I took Gid (and Will) with me as I thought Gid would appreciate seeing how good these guys are (I'm teaching Gid how to play the guitar so this was an educational visit!).
Well, they played for around 1 and a half hours of just the two of them on acoustic guitars. They were sensational. The big dude (Booba) is just lightning quick when he's playing lead. When I looked around the amount of people standing with their mouths open in disbelief was amazing. You can't help but just stand and stare.

Well, if you want to hear a sample of their music then click here to check out their web page. I have to say they sound a hundred times better live that just listening to their CD. The only problem with all of this though is that they have a huge following in Germany (with the likes of David Hasselhoff!) but that shouldn't put you off!

Bump Watching

For all you keen bump watchers out there, here is the long awaited bump shot at 30 weeks and 5 days.
Baby is well, he/she certainly is an active one! Hopefully he/she won't be giving us this much action at 3am in the morning in 2 months time!

Off to the coast

Well, one week is over and we are about to begin our second week of Easter holidays.
Easter is a great holiday, not only because it is so crucial in the Christian calendar and to us, but also because it is great to get two weeks off work. One week to 'tinker' with school work and another to holiday, rest and relax.
So tomorrow, after church we are off to Staithes on the north east coast.


We will blog later in the week to tell you all about it, we are staying in a house 2 doors up from where Captain Cook was born? lived? (not quite sure which one!)

A happy Easter to all.

School holidays

Don't you just love them!
Well Jamie and I do. We are now 3 days into them and we have been enjoying our lack of routine. We find the whole Monday to Friday get up around 6.30am be at work from 7.30am leave work between 4.30 and 6pm a bit boring... so it is so great when the holidays come round.
So... what have we been up to?
On Monday Jamie went to school with me to help me move lots of my heavy stuff and take down displays that required balancing precariously on the top of a ladder. Tuesday we both went to our own schools and caught up on paperwork for J and for me, well more packing up of my resources and things. I thought I should do it now when the kids aren't in as I have only 5 weeks of teaching left when we go back after Easter.
But today has been the best day so far. We got in our new car, ( we had to get one that would fit a pram and a car seat and 2 adults!!) and drove to Formby Point, near Liverpool,

to see the red squirrels,

stroll around in the sand dunes,and get our faces blown off on the beach.

It was great. We did see something that caught our eye, you really can find everything including a kitchen sink on Formby Beach!!

All in all a great day, a cool way to spend our day.

On another note, our good friends Eifion and Esther are now in Dubai and soaking up temperatures in the 30's. They were hoping to go sand dune buggy racing, we don't think the wind will be as biting there as it was today in Formby. Have a good holiday Jenkins!! Enjoy the sun!

For all you baby bump watchers, we will try to remember to take photos of the growing bump and post them soon. ( only 11 weeks to go!!)

End of Term

It's the end of term!!! The kids are leaving school and suddenly I am surrounded by peace and quiet. Oh the joys of knowing you have 2 weeks off!
Well, I knew it had been such a long time since I had posted that I thought I would share this little story with you. Some of you may know about it already but my friend here at work showed this to me earlier.
Below is a picture that won the Photo of the Year competition in the National Geographic. As you can see it is a pretty amazing shot. My colleague is a R.E. teacher and uses it to creat discussions in his class about Who, What, How, Where, Why etc. He says this photo in particular is a particularly powerful tool.

He then went on to say that this picture was in fact a hoax. When readers of the National Geographic had seen this the magazine received 2 seperate letters, one claiming the shark photo to be theirs and one claiming the helicopter photo to be theirs!

The photo had in fact been overlapped to give the sensational picture above. You can see below this the photos that were placed together to give this one image.

Well, I'll let you know how the half term is going throughout next week. I do have quite a lot of work to do so I will be coming back into school for a couple of days. As some of you know that is quite unlike me!

I'm also off to the United-Arsenal game this weekend. Got some tickets in the new Quadrants that have been recently built so looking forward to that.

On Easter Sunday we'll take off with my Mum and Dad to Whitby for a few days so it will be nice to get away. That's all for now!

Pregnancy update

Well, it has been requested so here it is. All those who are fed up hearing about it or are just not interested I apologise.

I am now 27 weeks and 4 days pregant and very excited. It is truely amazing the whole process of a baby developing inside and how they communicate without words. The whole moving around thing after meals and the waking up between 9.30 pm and 11pm as if to say, 'pay me some attention... I am in here you know!'
We were back at the midwife last week for check ups and again got to hear the heart beat. It is truely amazing and something that really does make you realise a baby is growing and developing daily and that we hope to be parents in less than 13 weeks time!

The practicalities continue. The cot is built, we now have sheets for it, the pram is built and stored away, friends and family have donated and bought us clothes and bits and pieces, so really we are just waiting to the big day.

We talk about being prepared however the antenatal classes haven't begun yet, so we are not sure how to be prepared, however fear factors as well as sheer delight and excitement share parts of our brain and discussion daily.

Apart from all that I am well and healthy, just the normal complaints, I get a sore back, especially in the evenings, and my lowest rib on the left side is sore most of the time. The midwife tells me it is to do with the release of a chemical called relaxin (yes it does what it sounds like) it relaxes muscles etc so my ribs are now more floatier than usual hence the botttom one jutting out and being painful. The leg cramps continue through the night with me hopping and dancing to a range of different beats in the dark as I try to sort my leg muscles out!
My little sister is still struggling with a twisted pelvis so her back pain is greater. We both say if this is as bad as our pregnancies get, we are very fortunate mums to be!

So the update on the baby and the pregancy, all is well, Jamie and I count our blessings every day and pray that not only will he/she be happy and healthy but will grow up to love God and people.

13 weeks and counting, but so far no stretch marks to count!



On a different note it was my parents 30th wedding anniversary this weekend. It was a joy to celebrate with friends and family and to see them so much in love and so happy. Jamie and I are blessed with parents who love each other deeply and who love us deeply - something we sometimes forget or take for granted! It was a great but tiring weekend, eating and celebrating in Patterson style. (Jamie as usual had to fight to be heard amongst all the Patterson women!)
So that is us all up to date. Baby is well, JA is well (and expanding) and Jamie continues to run in the rain and hail, sun and wind and seems to be gettting fitter and faster!


Oh... don't tell me how much we look alike or how much I have grown. I had all that from the aunts and uncles at the weekend! ( but it is pretty freaky how alike we are!)

Another week zooms by

Well, I did promise I would write at least every week, however this week just seems to have sped away at a pace of light years with not a lot happening.

I have been on courses on how to improve children's writing to level 5. Shouldn't it be how to encourage children to write imaginatively and creatively and not just to pass a test at the end of Key Stage 2?
I have been to visit a neighbouring school to share experiences and knowledge on how to improve the standards in Mathematics in our schools.
I have been to a staff meeting about improving map skills and hygiene in food technology.
I have been in reviews about special educational needs kids and how if I fill out more forms the government will give school more money so that we can deal we their complex learning needs.

Oh and I have taught my 35 Year 6 darlings that sugar dissolves quicker in hot water as the higher the temperature of the water, the more energy it contains therefore the solid will dissolve faster! ( What is the point? I hear some of you say) TO PASS THE KEYSTAGE 2 TEST, SILLY!

But don't worry, tomorrow I am doing sensible things like hockey, drugs education, probability and writing in simple and complex sentences, using a variety of connectives and punctuation.

Well, I am off now to get my lessons ready, hopefully this week will not fly by so quickly and hopefully I will have something more interesting to blog about by the weekend!

All change

This week saw the last of my parents evenings for a least a year. It felt quite weird as I still feel that I have so much time to go at work, but with the school timetable it was my last official meeting with my parents, (I have been seeing the same ones for the last 2 years as I have the same class again.)
It is also kind of strange as for the next few years at least, I will never do parents evening on my own as I hope and plan to job share and work part time. As you all know I am a bit of a control freak and I am not sure how sharing a class, classroom etc is going to work out, but I am getting used to the idea, I hope I am a good team player and I work well with whoever the person is going to be.
It is so far away in the future, (April 26th 2007 to be exact, as I had to fill my return to work form in, before I left!!)

Well, it is all change for me at work and at home. Yesterday the cot arrived and the study no longer exists. It now shares a room with Jamie's music stuff and the sofa bed. Nothing stays the same forever and we are so excited about this baby. He/she moves around a lot and is really starting to make an appearance, ( my body is expanding!!)

This blog, I seem to remember was not to be a baby diary, but I know for a lot of our friends, everything is changing for them and that there are lots of changes in the near and distant future for you all.

This week, I hope all the changes are pleasant and comfortable as well as welcomed as I/we are enjoying ours!

A visit to the capital

Well, this weekend was our third in a row away from home. ( Willow, our poor cat will eventually forgive us!)
Paris, York for a Christening and this weekend a visit to London with Eif and Esther to see Mary Poppins. What an amazing show and she really flew ( ok on wires but you couldn't tell!)
I am sure I could feel Jaime and Eifion's feet tapping beside me and Esther and I were definitely humming along in places.
We also had a chance to visit the Natural History museum. What a remarkable building! It was great. We did the shuffle, as it was so packed, past the dinosaur exhibition, we visited the Human body section and the Earth Sciences part about volcanoes and extreme weather. (that was 3 1/2 hours worth) We really enjoyed it and would love to visit soon.
Just a question. Has anyone seen the film 'one of our dinosaurs is missing' with Peter Ustinov? Jaime and I think it was filmed there. Any opinions out there?

What a great weekend, We squeezed in lots of good time with our friends before they leave for Australia in 5 weeks!!!!! We are now back in Manchester for the next 2 and then off to Belfast for my parents 30th wedding anniversary party. This bobbing around will have to be reduced soon, but for now we are having a great time seeing friends and family.
Jon and Roz, watch out we hope to visit at Easter!!!

We're back!

Well it is not as if we have really been anywhere but life seemed to take over and I never seemed to make the time to catch up with the blog.
I am now 23 weeks pregnant and quickly growing out of my clothes. Baby, dad and mum to be are doing well, this week we heard the heart beat for the first time, medicine and knowledge is a great thing, it was truely amazing.
The pram and car seat have arrived and await in their boxes ( my mum is slightly supersticious!!!) and we decorated the nursery over this past week as it was the long awaited and much needed half term. Apart from that, from time to time our noses are pushed into a range of parenting, baby prepartion and scarey books all related to the theme of the ever expanding family!

Well, what have we done over this past month!

1. Organised JA's Parents 30th wedding anniversary party for the end of March. Thirty years seems such a long time when we have just passed 5. It is truely amazing to see both our parents' marriages and how long and stable they have been, we feel blessed as children to have such great parents.

2. Visited Paris for 4 days as part of a belated Christmas gift. We enjoyed all the sighs PAris had to offer with rain, wind and snow thrown in for free! The Mona Lisa was great ( Jamie relived chapters of the Da Vinci code as we walked the corridors of the Louvre), Versailles was busy but beautiful and the Eiffel Tower served great tea. All in all the trip was great, JA especially enjoyed it as it was great to visit a city she has always wanted to visit!




3. Our good friends Eif and Esther have made the really exciting decision to relocate to the other side of the world! We wish them all the best as they move to Australia and hope that the galahs are friendly. We hope that the next 6 weeks go slowly as we try to squeeze as much time with them as possible.

4. Emma ( JA's youngest sister) is enjoying her pregnancy and continues to be healthy. Her baby hopes to arrive 2 weeks after ours so we wait and watch to see who's comes first!


We do solemly declare that this blog will become become a priority and have at least one post a week.

For now,

Rosemary, we hope morning sickness doesn't kick in this week ( or the next few)
Greg, good luck in the new job.

Soren, grow strong and healthy and enjoy swimming classes with mummy this week.

Leon, we hope the new tooth comes quickly and painlessly, please be kind to your parents during this time.
Eif and Esther, happy packing.
Dee and Andrew... hope studies for both of you are positive and productive.

We'll be back!

XXX

E-Bay song

JA will kill me for actually bothering to post this but here we go! I heard this song on the radio the other day and thought it was hilarious. It reminds me of my dad and his current obsession with E-Bay. He's even offering to take things off my hands and sell them for me such is his love for this web-page.
So, click here and then press play. Be prepared to chuckle!

Street Art

We were all sent a link today by one of my colleagues directing us to a great web site on alternative street art. I thought it was pretty amazing so click here to check it out.

By the way, everything is going well at the moment even though we're back at work! However, there is something to be said about working a 3-day week!

End of term fun

With half a day left I thought I would share the activity that caused most excitement in my class today. Not a DVD of the Simpsons or my wonderful Christmas worksheets, but Penguin batting. Sounds inhumane I know, but the penguin does voluntarily drop itself from the cliff and survives the actual hitting.
Have a try and you'll find that it's quite addictive. My best score is 555.3 metres!

CHRISTmas or Xmas?

As a teacher you look forward to the end of term and so I began handing out my Christmas worksheets earlier on this week. With one particular class of 13 year olds I had a mixture of mathematical Christmas co-ordinates and Christmas wordsearches.
One student was working though the wordsearch and stopped suddenly. They looked at the sheet and called out, "Jesus, what's he doing there?"
Unbelievable! What is Christmas coming to?! It brought a fair bit of discussion for the remainder of the lesson but sent home the message that we must battle through the commercialism and busy-ness (?) of this time of year to push the real meaning of CHRISTmas.

Embrace

It's almost a whole month since I have been able to post something so I thought I would take the time to mention the Embrace concert JA and I attended last Friday. It was my first concert visit at the MEN Arena. An impressive venue but the sound quality was not as good as places like the Apollo.
Anyway, the boys were brilliant and were very humbled to be playing infront of ten and a half thousand people. They tend to get audiences in the region of 2 thousand so this was a big step up for them. I realise now that in the last year I have been to see my five favourite bands and this was a great way to round off that year.
If you do want to try them out, check out their 'Out of Nothing' album and I'm sure you'll be hooked.

The end to a great show!

Silence is broken, the news is out!

Well, it really has been ages since I posted. Part of the reason has been that life has taken over, school has been so hectic with the run up to Christmas and also because I have been struggling to stay awake at night, ( once I get home from school!)
The reason for this you may be asking yourselves. Why does a healthy 27 year old teacher need a nap when she comes home from work, after tea, after the bath and then to the night sleep? Basically I have been napping, eating, sleeping and teaching for the past 8 weeks.

Well... I am pregnant!

Yes, the time has come again for my body to do strange things, only this time the pregnancy is progressing nicely and hopefully our family will increase by a small miracle by the end of June 2006. We have been very cautious with our feelings and emotions, as well as our plans as we are still recovering from our last failed pregnancy, but we are told by our midwife and all of the wonderful people who poke and prod me that things seem ok.

So for now ok is good enough.

We got to see him/her ( I think he is a boy) last Wednesday and he was moving his legs, I thought he would make a great replacement for Roy Keane, Jamie isn't so sure.

Now that I am passing past 12 weeks, I feel so much better with the random tiredness subsiding as well as the nausea. Bring on the Christmas shopping now I have the energy!!


Apart from that life has been pretty ordinary.

I took 41 children to the cinema to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I have subjected every class I have ever taught to the reading of this book and me ranting on about the great fiction that I read as a child. It was a joy to sit and watch their eyes as they twinkled with delight as Aslan appeared from the tent, they could only imagine what he looked like from the book, it was cool to chat over lunch, is the book better? Were their predictions of characters etc correct?
I remembered why I became a teacher, why it is amazing to work with children and why I get up and go to work every day.

Today as we were making Christmas decorations I was sitting with a group of 8 children. They were discussing Little Britain. It is often really interesting to listen in on their conversations but today it was fascinating.
S:I think Little Britain is racist, what do you think J?
J: Well, if it was it wouldn't be allowed on telly cause that's wrong.
S: But people are allowed to have their own opinions.
J: But on telly, they have to be fair and right.
P: I am not sure if they are racist but I think they make stereotypes.
S: Oh that thing we have been learning about when we say all women are weak and all nurses should be girls.
J: Oh I remember, yeah maybe they are not racist but they are definitely stereotyping.

Wow. What a conversation from eight 10 and 11 year olds. I think they may, when they are older, consider writing to points of view!

Well, that is all from me, no doubt we will keep you informed about how things are going, however this blog is not going to be a pregnancy journal, if it begins to sound like one let me know and I will rethink what is going on in my head!

Have a good week to you all, not long now until Christmas, a time when many of us can take extra time to spend with family and friends and enjoy all that this amazing Christian season has to offer.

A Little Story

As you can tell there has not really been much going on on this page for which we both apologise. However, I thought I would share a silly little story from my day at school:

During my bottom set Year 8 lesson, one pupil who has Special Needs (William) began crying as his support teacher left him and went and sat with someone else. I asked him if he was ok and through his sobs I heard him say, "Miss thinks I trumped!" I wasn't quite sure how to take this so left it until the end of the lesson.
When the class left, his support teacher came to speak to me about William. She said that he had recently been trumping a lot in lessons and that the smell is unbearable (like rotten eggs apparently). The Support Teachers had told him that when he needs to trump he is to go outside and relieve himself there! During today's lesson, she claimed, he had let one slip. When she confronted him about this he denied any wrong doing to the extent that he said she could have done it! As a result of the bad smell she had left him and this had caused him to start crying. I was truly thankful for now being in the know!
Two days later, when I had the same class again, I was standing at the front explaining what we were going to be doing. Mid-sentence, William's hand shot up. "Mr McCulloch, I have to go outside to trump." Sounding shocked I let him go. The whole class at this point fell completely silent as they wondered if they had heard correctly. We all watched William go outside, close the door, relieve himself and come back inside. At that point we all just burst out laughing at a very surreal moment. Thankfully William saw the funny side too.

Could it be?!

I have to say that I have just experienced a very surreal moment. Three lads were standing outside my door after break claiming they had seen me on the internet. I admitted that I did have a website but when they mentioned it was of a video clip I looked puzzled. They said I was in a small room dancing in front of the computer. How strange, but no it was not me.
So I moved on to my next lesson thinking no more of it. After the lesson the same three boys appeared. Sir, we have the web address do you want us to show you? Yeh, go for it.
Then, right in front of my eyes I appear, dancing, topless. Something here was not right! My form crowded around in disbelief at what they were seeing. Mr McCulloch, is that you? No it certainly is not but it LOOKS LIKE ME!!!!
So, after all of this, click here and see for yourself!

Weekends Away

We returned from a lovely weekend away yesterday determined to do this kind of thing more often. We just spent 2 great days with my parents and Dave and Nic in a lovely cottage in the Cotswalds.

JA and I left school as close to the bell as possible in order to shoot off down south on Friday night. Although it took us 4 hours to get there as a result of the traffic we all managed to catch up by the fire (see below) and play our first ever 6 player Settlers! It took a while to explain the rules but it was well worth it. Well done mum on winning your first ever Settlers game (even though I had to tell her that she had accumulated enough points to win!).

Saturday saw us visit Stow and Burton-on-the-water (a mini Venice apparently). Even though it was pretty wet we enjoyed checking out the beautiful buildings and mulling through the many craft shops. Oh, and stopping off for plenty of tea!

After a lovely afternoon enjoying the area we made it back to the cottage for a nap and a chance to sit by the fire (again) and read the paper. A quick visit to the fish and chip shop provided us with the necessary energy to begin our second Settlers game. This time I'm glad to say I was victorious!

Before bed JA managed to sample to tremendous roll-top bath in our room! (ooh, how the other half live!)

After a nice lie-in we all sat down for a wonderful Irish fry setting us up for the trip home. JA and I decided to call by Stratford-Upon-Avon on our way back but unfortunately we were rained out. We did however visit Shakespeare's birthplace and the Swan Theatre. We will definately have to make time to go back again soon.

So after getting home on Sunday at a decent time (and hearing United beat Chelsea!) we felt really relaxed and ready for the start of the week. So thanks mum and dad for inviting us on this lovely weekend but it is something JA and I must really try and do more often.

Happy Families!

My class really are ok.

Well just before half term some of you may have read my rant on my class.
I take it all back, yes they can be naughty and continnually push boundaries, but today, the day after Halloween I was showed with trick or treat goodies including wobbly jelly eyes and spiders legs.
It was also a girl's eleventh birthday, so she brought in some of her cake for me and when I was on playground duty I was showered with grapes, strawberries, riveta cheese and chives and other goodies. My class know the way to my heart must be through my mouth, that or when I am eating I am usually quieter.
Anyway, a postcard arrived from the Dominican Republic as one of my 10 year old sunseekers is currently there at the moment, and a child stayed behind at lunch to tell me that she is going to be an auntie and her sister is going to call the baby Kian. ( She thinks that is a good Irish name so I would like it)
Well apart from all that today I taught Literacy, Numeracy, Science, PSHE, P.E. amd visited the school library to change our books and talk about the book I am reading. ( The Penultimate Peril, latest in the Lemony Snickett series).

Today was a busy one, but I was reminded that my class are ok and that they do treat me well even if they want me to look like Miss Piggy with all the food that makes it on to m y desk by 3.30pm.