afraid if t was my kids asked to bring a spade in I would be the first parent to get them there, as it would be fun for my kids!!!
and teaching isnt always about book work. The best teachig is Life skills.
So 1 hour clearing snow before warming up in class with excercise and then having 4 hours doing 'school work' sounds a great plan :)
Lea :)

I'm with you, Lea. :-) Children need to learn that they're part of the wider community, and that means helping out, not spoilt little emperors to be waited on.

Yes I'd be quite happy for the kids to do some clearing before lessons too BUT I'm 100% sure I wouldn't want to be the bus driver on the school run that morning...

I'm not sure how old the children are in the original post but I well remember mine at junior school age.  Rather generously I'll describe them as enthusiastic and a touch cack-handed!!  Lots of padding might be wise :)

Hope the donkeys keep their rugs tonight!! What is wrong with people to do that to an animal in this weather :-(

I'm not that far from you and we have a few inches here.

I spent a lot of the afternoon gritting and snow shoveling the road I live in as it's not gritted, 2 passers by said thanks, no one else and no help from anyone either... I know they were watching from their windows too..
Killed my back for what??

I gritted the car park and the street twice and not one other resident helped. Mind you they never have done and I know they could see me, one of my neighbors spends hrs at her kitchen window and never misses a thing (nosey mare!) I have no intention of gritting it all again so I've parked in the next street and sod the neighbors!. They can damn well struggle.

Weeman I do hope your donkeys keep their rugs, Perhaps the lowlifes who stole the first lot won't think to come back.

All rugs are still on this morning, I did my last check last night at 11pm! (oh how I hate the dark !! ) but the snow on the groung helped . Noticies at the gate telling peolpe about the "Crime" and the police crime number with phone numbers for people to contact if they see anything. hopefully this will be just a one off!
No more snow overnight here but everything is a little frozen and crunchy to walk on

Well unfortunately it is as expected where the snow was walked on has now become treacherous slick ice. 

>Well unfortuantely it is as expected where the snow was walked on has now become treacherous slick ice.

We took Tara for a walk last night, we go straight out our house onto the lane, and it was like an ice rink, even where there were no tyre marks :( Pete kept slipping and sliding and hurting his back, and Tara kept pulling me to slip :( :( And there is no way round it as there is no other way to walk bar getting the car out on the ice rink :(
Lea :)

Last nights walks was OK as ti was crunchy ice, but now it has gone Icerink, not looking forward trying to walk the girls.

Masses of snow up here (well we are Aberdeenshire and it's January)! 

I think the children would have a whale of a time with their little spades, sounds like great fun.

As for the donkeys rugs being stolen, just dreadful! 

Have fun in the snow if you have any and take care driving.

Can someone please order and send some more snow for the south coast, were getting a bit low on stocks at the moment. The dogs are still enjoying themselves up on the downs though. It's great throwing a ball and watching all the dogs dive in to find it !!  :)

You are joking right?? I didn't stop snowing all day yesterday and we had a few more flurries today!!

Not joking, we had the first day of snow and nothing since to top it up !!! :(  Well unless you want to call the very light icing sugar type stuff that we had which did absolutely nothing as a top up.

More of the white stuff forecast for tonight for us.

Where are you, your sooo lucky!

West Oxon near Chipping Norton so the highest part.

Just going into Oxford to see a Client and I recon we have had about three times the amount.

Just a sprinkle overnight here.

Think I will stay down here for today, that's just a little too far to go today, we will just have to make do with what we have left in our own area here. ! Hee hee.

Well its raining here now ! Back to sodden muddy walks for the girlies, at least the snow made it a little more pleasant for a few days but backt o normanl muddy dogs today. :-(
Aileen

Lack of snow will make the pavements a lot less dangerous round here. 

Was just about managing using the grass verges, and where the pavements were really bad walking in the road, which I don't like doing. 

Also meant I  did their walks at the likely warmest part of the day instead of their usual evenings.

Weve just had a nice walk on the downs, went through the woods, there is still a good covering up there with loads of scent and smells for the dogs to "read" (deer, fox, hare) and of course where other peoples dogs have been although not very many . Still dry and crispy. But a top up of fresh snow would be great here too.

How are the donkeys?  That's a despicable thing to do. 

We woke to 15 to 20 cm of new snow yesterday and temperature of -13C.  We need a lot more snow for snowshoeing in the bush or else risk piercing the decking with a stick.  Oban and I did walk back through my neighbour's cedar swamp to his ponds, we can only do that in winter.  This morning it's -20C ( ~-5F)  It's supposed to be good and cold all week so that bodes well for freezing the lakes so ice huts can go out.  But we need more snow for re-opening snowmobile and cross country ski trails.  Last week's thaw took them down to dirt in many places.

Can you buy these things?  http://www.yaktrax.co.uk/  Lots of folks here use them when the ground is like a skating rink.

Yes I had meant to buy some two years ago when we last had snow, and of course if I order some now ti will be gone by the time they arrive.

It wouldn't be so bad if they were little spades but they wanted garden spades.  A lot of parents have complained as the grounds are just too dangerous , there have been two children with brokenh legs , one broken arm and a broken shoulder already , I don't want my son to be the next one injured .

They are provided with grit but the caretaker is too lazy to put any down other than in the staff car park!

I got Yaktrax two years ago, using them for the first time this year, and they're wonderful, I've been in and out fields and down iced up lanes, haven't skited once. Walking in the deep snow is a bit of a slog though, and the hens have had quite enough, so no more for Fife please.

Jetstone Jewel:
The donkeys are fine thank you, they still have their reserve sets of weatherproof rugs on with full necks. I believe the local parish council have been notified and of course the police also know, so am hoping there are lots of folks keeping their eyes open when passing.
It's just started to rain a littlt this afternoon, what a shame back to mud and mess again I suppose!

You must be very close to me Weeman, it's raining here too.. I'm just north of Shoreham :-)

You are about 45mins along the A27 from us.

Oh yuk ! it started with rain, then heavy sleet and now loads of snow on a very wet ground. I have just given the outside family their supper and haynet for the night and I'm soaked !!!!

Goodness having all weather types today here, heavy snow again now!!

Ditto, got soaked walking the dogs about 5pm, as snow was forecast for 6 onward.

Initially it was too wet to pitch, but starting to now in the garden and cars and roofs.

It was just starting to snow when I got home from work at 6pm so I took the time to throw a tarpaulin over the car,and a snow shovel in the boot.  Work won't accept snow as an excuse not to be in work tomorrow.

I've just looked out of the bedroom window, and the snow is well and truly settling and doesn't look as if it is going to let up anytime soon.  :-(

Barabara, I too tried to order crampons last time we had snow.  Everyone I tried had sold out.  But I did get an email back from one online site, asking if I would like to be notified when they had them back in stock.  I forgot all about it, and got an email around Easter time!  I ordered them, and put them under my car seat so they would be ready to use.  They have been stuck under my seat all this time!

Well have ordered some with an estimated deliver of 25th to 30th, what's betting the need will pass by then.  Mind you Amazon usually deliver early.

We had more snow overnight too....a couple of centimetres.

It wasn't forecast by the Met office but the system was quite big and moved up from the Soouth.....not really sure how they missed it!

Heavy snow forecast for Friday and then a thaw....back to mud and flood :-(

We have had a few inches overnight and still coming  down heavily now.

What a sorry state outside today, just opened the curtains and it has gone,(; that very wet snow and sleet that we had yesterday has ruined everything. (: I'm sure when we take the girls out later it won't be buch better either.  (: (: (:

Youve ordered some from Amazon, I did'nt think of that!  Mine must have come from the lousy weatherman it wasn't quiet what I wanted and it was just horrible I won't order from him again !!  Haaa haaa           (21/01/13)

Ha ha we got what you got, but it wil make walking the dogs safer for me, as long as it doesn't freeze..

Its' not fair - all the paths that were cleared are all covered over again!  The local school still hasn't been able to open - when the council said they couldn't spare the staff to clear and grit approach roads and hill going down to the school - the staff and parents worked to clear it yesterday.  Another few inches on it today!   I have some trax things for my shoes - have to be careful because they work loose and pop off - then have to track back to find them without slipping!  We haven't had post since last thursday!   The snow kept slipping off the roof last night making a thunderous noise - slept (between thuds and crashes and Meg crying because she was afraid) on the sofa downstairs. 

I remember the 1963 weather and such lovely deep snow, our school in Cranleigh surrey was never closed, the coach that collected the children from surounding villages to our dismay always turned up albiet a bit late some days. What on earth is going on these days !

So do I - and our buses dropped us off a mile from the school at that time and we had to walk the rest.  All the classrooms used to open onto an open corridor and the snow used to blow in - it was cold!!!   The same for the little country infant school I went to - we had a bus ride of about 4 miles and then a mile walk up the lane to the village.  I also remember when I first started teaching that we had to line the milk bottles up along the fire guard in the corner of the classroom to thaw them out for milk time!!  The one school I worked in was several miles away and the head lived a few doors away from me - I used to see her setting out walking and so I had to go too!  Nowadays they are driven to the door - mind you more parents are both working now so walking is a luxury they don't have time for.

> we had to line the milk bottles up along the fire guard in the corner of the classroom to thaw them out for milk time!

We had to put ours on the heating pipes - gave me a lifelong hatred of warm/hot milk/milky drinks :) :)

Do you remember the warm milk in the summer oh how horrible!! But like the teaching staff and children it /we all got there!

> But like the teaching staff and children it /we all got there

Outside toilets that froze solid:) :) Can't remember having any days off school due to bad weather - even in 1963 :) We did get sent home a bit early due to smog - 7/8 year olds walking home alone, crossing roads and open common land :) We didn't have a phone at home so the school couldn't ring our mother to tell her :) :) Happy days :)

I think one of the reasons schools shut in the snow nowadays is that the staff can often live a long way from the school and have to travel in whereas when I was a child schools usually only catered for local children and the staff too lived locally so could always get in if it snowed.

I work in a school - the largest primary school in the east of our county with over 650 children from reception age through to year 6. We have 25 teaching staff and only a dozen or so of those live within 15 miles of the school and some staff travel at least an hour and a half to get here each day. Despite the snow our school did remain open but at least 9 teaching staff were unable to get in due to the condition of the roads - most of us who were able to get to school walked in - it took one teacher over an hour to get here. Over three quarters of the children turned up for school and it was generally only those who live out in the countryside who didn't make it in - along with those few who you can always guarantee won't turn up for the slightest of reasons :-)

Every class had a member of staff in it but not all of those were teachers - we have 9 HLTAs who work in the school and they covered classes until we were able to get some local supply staff in to cover the absent teachers - some of whom were able to get in later during the day.

I got to school at just past 7am and helped the caretaker clear paths and spread grit - a huge school so  a lot of paths and if we hadn't been able to clear the paths or get enough staff in to have the correct ratio of staff to pupils we would have had to close on the old H and S grounds or risk being sued if an accident had happened. We did manage to stay open but only because we were able to achieve the minimum standard required.

No Daisy, I was never fortunate enough to have any school days off due to bad weather either!  EVER

> I think one of the reasons schools shut in the snow nowadays is that the staff can often live a long way from the school

Oh - I agree :) But it is surprising how other people manage to get into work despite the snow :) :) Our postman still delivered our post every day and I received other deliveries, despite the local schools here being shut for at least a week :( I appreciate that some people may have a near impossible journey, but I do think that others are very quick to say that they can't do it :(

Yes Daisy, you are oh so  right there ! !

I used to wait for the bus and ifit was ten minutes late we used to go home get changed and go sledging !

The goody two shoes people used to wait longer but the majority decided that sledging much more fun !!