Yew Tree Primary School

Last Thursday I did my final school visit of the spring season: I've not sat at my drawing desk for 6 weeks, so I'm getting twitchy, plus I won't miss those early morning train trips.

It was a great day to end on though: a really enthusiastic school. I worked exclusively with the infants, getting in two different stories per session, so managed to read 8 books through the day: it's much more fun for me if I don't repeat the same sessions over and over, and I think it helps to keep things fresh.

I tried out more embellishments for reading Stinky! - getting the kids to be buzzing flies, just before we do the 'tickly quickly flies' chorus. I was concerned it might be hard to get them to stop buzzing, but we had fun practising starting and stopping really suddenly when I raised and dropped my hand, so that was solved fine.

I've also been practising A Lark in the Ark lately, as I've been invited to read it, along with the author Peter Bently, at the Edinburgh Festival later in the year.

I still haven't solved the problem of children getting over-excited about the flap opening, but the audience will be formally seated at Edinburgh, so I think that will probably sort it out.

At the end of the day, I was presented with a lovely book the children had made for me. Here are some pictures from it (there are more in the Picture Gallery):


To finish, here are two more sketches, from the morning's train. I have joined them end to end, as that's how they were seated: