I had to give a talk about the weather (and my job) to a group of Primary 2 children - ages 5-6. 25 of them. I'm not really that good with kids, so trying to aim the talk at the right level was hard enough, working with the teacher to control the children was even worse and I made the usual mistake - open questions! Ah, I'm a fool!
I was told, "never ask questions with more than two answers," and "never ask any question that could lead to a story about the weekend," but I ended up doing exactly that... Not horrifically but I guess I'm just not cut out to work with sprogs very much.
Having said all of that, I actually think it went quite well. I've got no idea what a good lesson is with kids that age (should have asked Kate for advice!) but their teacher seemed pretty pleased. I'd taken a load of the old school met kit that we have as back-ups, sunshine recorder (looks like a crystal ball on a stand), an "aspirated psychrometer" (two thermometers with a clockwork fan attached), hand-held anemometer (wind measuring thingy in black Bakelite - very 50s retro), small Stevenson Screen, satellite images and charts.
I had a few print outs of my favourite images such as a global map with nothing on it then ask the kids how many lightning strikes they thought would have happened in half an hour world wide (they thought 31) and then show them. In this case I'd printed out another chart with the strikes shown, and there were a few hundred at least. Certainly impressed the teacher, and I think the kids liked it.
So, although not a full win, I think I came out ahead. If nothing else when the children came in and saw all the kit laid out one of the lads said , "he's got cool stuff!" I liked that kid then.
Well, apart from that, I've had a couple of chances to get some pictures from work, and I think a few of them were alright. Comments welcome.
Firstly a Pax (passenger) transport that popped up:
Then a Merlin:
Then a Hawk (in this case from the centre of aviation medicene):
And finally some of our guys in the sun:
I need to use a bit of a faster shutter speed but had dropped it to get a bit of blur on the blades.
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