Thursday - Uniday!!!

Today I almost learnt to ride a unicycle. But I'm much better at almost riding it than I was. We had sport at school today and I went to circus. I discovered that I can't qualify for my level 1 juggling certificate because even though I can now juggle three balls indefinitely, I need to be able to juggle two in one hand twenty times. There's a trick of rolling them and juggling them sideways which is necessary to pick up advanced juggling skills in the future, and all of a sudden I feel like I can't juggle at all again - a bit like learning to drive a manual car after after driving for several years!

There is a regular unicycle workshop at lunchtime on Tuesdays and Thurdays, but I passed because I had my first lesson with year nine after lunch. On monday, two turned up, and yesterday was the excursion, so today was my first chance to meet them. After my brainwave about setting up all my own management systems, and a bit of help from a book I am reading, appropriately called Getting the Buggers to Behave, I set up some really solid plans for the lesson today. We talked about expectations and stuff and I got them to do a fair bit of work - though it was all a bit of a culture shock to be honest. However, though engagement was very very low, with a lot of help we got stuff done and there were no major behaviour issues.

Then I went to Circus West in the afternoon and almost learnt to ride a unicycle - going up and down the stage, coming off, getting back on , coming off badly and almost spraining my wrist and getting back on and getting all hot and smelly. It was fun and I don't think I'm going to be able to walk tomorrow!