For Christmas James (and myself
) got the new school building with extra floors.
It took me about 4 hours to put it all together, needless to say it wasn't on Christmas Day!
I know we had extra floors, but I'm used to putting together system x so goodness knows
how long it would take someone who hadn't done it before!
For the past weeks we have been gathering what we needed to set up all the
classrooms James wanted, reflecting some of the subjects he has at school.
It has taken us some time to get together everything we needed and on Saturday (all afternoon!) I set it up - with guidance from James (and a little help from Cynda the cat!)
Please bear with us; there are lots of photos because it is a large school. The background on some may look strange because I had to use a sheet to blank out the kitchen where the photos were taken so the school would show up OK rather than merging into the background!
First of all, this is a photo of the front of the building:
and this is the view from the back
There is a small health and safety issue at the front because the school is obviously only meant to have one extra floor so the curved 'glass' round the stairs does not fit properly on one level, leaving a gap at the bottom so I am going to have to do a bit of cutting I think, so that it will fit. Any other suggestions?
Here are some of the rooms we made:
On the top floor - Science - unfortunately the children have to stand on chairs to look at the microscopes
Social Studies
Headteacher's Office, complete with a chair for any child who has been sent out of class for misbehaving
Down one flight of stairs to the second floor - Woodwork, where the children are busy making parts for a kennel
Mathematics
Computer skills
(James loves IT, and the IT teachers are among his favourites so they had to be in the scene!)
Down another set of stairs to the first floor - Music
Seen from the outside
Home Economics where the children are taking part in a Masterchef Challenge, all having to make something with fish, plus vegetables and a sweet dish
On this floor is also the staff room, where one teacher who is taking a class out on a field trip in the afternoon is taking the opportunity to have an early lunch
Down the stairs to the ground floor. Here is the art room, my favourite little boy klicky has turned out to be very good at art!
In the entrance hall is the school office and just by the door is a noticeboard and a display
of trophies won by the school sports teams
Also to the side of the entrance hall is a reading corner
The toilets are at the right of the ground floor, it seems that the drying machines are out of order
as one little boy is emerging with wet hands, the janitor is also on the way to mend a blockage in the toilets so he is in for a busy afternoon
We decided to build a canteen for the children to buy snacks and healthy lunches (where possible!) This isn't quite as big as we had hoped but we were running out of table space. We are going to work on enlarging this, adding tables and chairs and replacing the green roof with a red one
In here the children who are going on the field trip are taking an early lunch too
At the front, the school bus that will take them on the trip has already arrived
Because it is nearly lunch time the school crossing lady is going out of the entrance to take her place at the crossing - a well mannered ex pupil who is on holiday from college and visiting to help out in the PE department for the afternoon is holding the door for her
I thought the Sports Hall was very small for all the activities taking place so I bought an extra one and put
them together. I was pleased with the end result giving seperate areas for gym and sports
This is the front view
and the back
the sports side
the gym side
Walter (of Walts-Trains) kindly sent me two portaloos for use in a project planned for the Kirkbean Exhibition but James decided they would be good to use as changing rooms!
One of James' favourite subjects at school is rural skills so we had to dedicate an area to
this. It is alongside the sports hall and canteen
The children can be seen busily planting vegetable seedlings. Notice the children are all
dressed in wellington boots! The rural skills teacher's car is parked up to the gates in case
she has to dash off to the garden centre for more supplies.
We hope you like our school, it took a long time to set up, but we thought it was worth it.
Our thanks go to Sandy and Junior who held the cloth to disguise the background - oh and of course Cynda who had to play her part (at least she sat in the garden area
)
Elaine
