This is, for anyone who has never seen one before (and I suspect that’s most of you out there in cyberspace, excluding my PGCE buddies), an energy ball. It’s a teaching aid to demonstrate to children what conducts electricity and what doesn’t.

Twelve times today I’ve taught the same 15 minute long lesson about conductivity for twelve different groups of about 15 tiny people between the ages of four and seven. I feel like some kind of endurance hero. We’ve held hands, we’ve held it against clothing, foreheads, chins, ears and earrings. We’ve broken our circle of hand-holding weenies with bits of tinfoil and cloth and we’ve seen what happens! I’ve had about 200 children gaze at me in wonder at the electrical circuit in their hands that made the ball light up.

At the end of the day, my own class of weenies were asked what bit of “science day” they liked best and I was thrilled to hear a little voice pipe up with “the ball – it was great”. My oh my, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Not only that but the headmistress whispered in my ear that she’d been thrilled with how the children were learning as she passed through my teaching space. Phew – I may have gone some way to mitigating Friday’s transgressions! I sure hope so.