My First School Visit - Jean Healey

Well today is the day I thought – I will either do well or not at all. But if I don’t try I will never know.

So there I was walking up the path to reception of my first school, thinking “here goes”.

After signing in, I sat and waited for someone to collect me, then realised I was actually sitting outside the Headmaster’s office, like I had been naughty. Oh well, there’s a first for everything.
The Key Stage 2 Coordinator came to collect me, shook my hand and we briefly chatted about me, myself and I and what I had planned. Then she took me to the reception class where the children would be. Luckily the children were still in assembly so I quickly had chance to get my things ready and have a brief chat with the Reception teachers.

Then the kids starting filing in one by one, walking past me to take off their coats, gawping at me like I was some kind of alien. That was funny. “Crikey” I thought as they all started sitting down in front of me, most of them still with their mouth wide open in awww! They had obviously been told the day before that I was coming.

Maybe they were expecting some “big author”, when in fact it was just little old me. Well if I wanted to get out of it now, it was definitely too late.

The teacher then introduced me – and away I went. Because my story’s main character was about a cat, I started by asking the children if they had any pets at home and what their names were. They thought it was hilarious when I told them my cat was called Peewee.

I had a prop with me – the cat himself (not a real cat of course) who was in a drawstring bag and I got them to guess what colour he was before I pulled him out. The person who guessed correctly got a special sticker off me. This was just the warm up. Then once I started reading my story I was fine.

The looks on their faces when the story was reaching its climax was an absolute dream. At the end I asked “did you enjoy that”? To which they all shouted Yeaaaahhh”. Phew!

I asked them questions afterwards about what they remembered about the story and what other animals featured in the story and the ones that guessed correctly were rewarded with more stickers! I gave them all a paper plate each and asked them if they would all like to draw me a meal on a plate what they think Horace would like for his tea (as it didn’t say at the end of the story). There were lots of wonderful drawings. I took them all home with me (the plates not the children) and they are all (yes ALL) plates are now on my website. Even though it took me ages to put them all on there. I felt a bit guilty just putting a few on there, especially after they had all worked really hard.

Before it was time to go and as I was gathering together my things, I remember one little girl just standing right in front of me, looking up and smiling, so I smiled back. I wasn’t prepared when she suddenly grabbed me and gave me a great big hug. Bless.

Thinking back, I really don’t know what I was worried about. Once I had relaxed and started talking to the children, I was fine. I not only did it once, but twice with the second Reception class, which left my throat a little dry.

I have to say that I came out buzzing. The children were all very well behaved and the best thing of all was that they loved my story. Even more so, I have been asked to go back and do some work with children further up the school. So I am definitely going to do it again. I found the whole experience very rewarding.

What I say is, you never know unless you try – and I’m glad I tried.