My butterfly lion has its first two butterflies.

One of the things you don’t realise if you don’t mix with children is how they can’t finish something and then wait for others to catch up. It never occurred to me that they just can’t chill out in the way that any teenager or grown up will do. It’s full-on every moment of every day.

They have to fill every morsel of time with something new. One of the greatest skills in teaching is to have a bag of tricks to entertain and drive the children, hence I have a pile of butterfly templates for children to decorate in blue to add to my butterfly lion. It develops their fine motor skills and links in with their English learning, provides them with something to fill five or ten minutes and will enhance our classroom too.

I have busy boxes for all levels in English and maths so any child can access a quick task if they finish before their peers and all sorts of other things in my metaphorical Mary Poppins bag.