Grandpont Nature Park – 7.55 on 2 June 2015

3 hours 4 minutes after sunrise.


Week 22

The series

The cow parsley is in decline, the buttercups are in the ascendant. In the meadow beyond the trees it’s the buttercups that are fading as the oxeye daisies take over. I’d never noticed until this year that the microclimates of these adjacent meadows are so different.
 
There’s quite a range of different grasses and I’m sure that, like the flowers, the populations rise and decline though their being all green makes it less obvious and I’m not good at identifying them.


 
I did some more maths with M today. His three sessions with the student volunteer, B, which M absolutely loved, are finished now as it’s exam time but I’ve kept track of what they’ve been doing so I could take over. Most recently B was hiding ten rubbers* under a piece of paper then removing some and showing them to M for him to count. M then used his fingers to work out how many were left under the paper. When he’d guessed, B removed the paper for the reveal. M got it right! It’s possible to count what you can’t see!
 
I got M to show me what he’d been doing with B, then we arranged the ten rubbers in different groups on the table as a reminder that there are lots of different ways to make ten. In a different role later this afternoon I refunded his £4 bus fare. Four coins in one hand and none in the other. Three in one hand and one in the other. Two in each. This maths stuff gets just everywhere.
 
Much as I enjoy them, it’s not my job to play these games and I’ve been trying to find someone else to help take M’s maths on further. And guess what. It’s not anyone’s job to help him.
 


* Americans – get out your British English dictionaries.