It is the end of the week. The men have gone home and the children have returned from school only to go out again to friends. Mai Ling and Granma T are the only ones remaining and they are busy 'doing the books'. It is late and the first real cold wind is November blowing down the leaves.

ML: It is a lazy wind that is blowing under that door.

GT: Pardon! - I have never heard that before.

ML: Oh it is something that Leo and Leone taught me last year when they visited.
The wind is so lazy - it blows through you and not round you.

GT: You are right the wind is beginning to chill my bones too. But I am much older than you Mai Ling and feel the cold more than I did as a younger woman.

ML: I too am getting older..another year on...my, how time flies...

GT: Isn't that what Leo called "Tempus Fugit?"

ML: Fancy learning Latin at our age! You know, it really was a good idea having those children from the International School stay with the youngsters. Is anything happening this time around?

GT: No, no although Little Ming and Little Fung were invited back by Leo and Leone to spend some time at the school.

ML: I think I remember them going on that trip but the details of their escapades are vague.

GT: Wouldn't it have been wonderful if they could have gone back to England with Leo and Leone. They left China last Saturday?

ML: Oh, for the opportunity to see another country, to see how other people live...

GT: If only we had had those chances to travel... Little Ming and Little Fung have done much, much more than we have ever done.

ML: That is a fact! That pair have quite an interesting time of it!

GT: Not like when you were a girl....

ML: Now, you are laughing at me Granma T, although younger than you, I feel more in keeping with your generation ...

GT: And here I am thinking of you as a really modern miss!

ML: You are too kind, but just think how long I have worked here?

GT: Perhaps I had better not. I just know that we couldn't run the business without you. And it was you that insisted we modernise. Oh what was that phrase of Leone's?

ML: We have to GET WITH IT!

GT: That's right.. I am going to GET us a drink of tea, can you GET those figures finished those figures without me?

ML: No problem... I will also leave a note for Wai Ping to put a strip on the bottom of that door. We might as well as well have comfort as we get older....

In the meantime ........

Children you might like to:

i. complete the silhouettes of the cuckoo clock and alarm clock;
ii. consider the following problem - you have a 7 minute timer and an11 minute timer. How will you use them to help you boil some pasta for 19 minutes?
iii. list all the words to do with time, the passing of time and how we measure time;
iv. find out all you can about GMT
v. explore the Internet to find out about the International Date Line and how some countries are in front of Greenwich Mean Time while some are behind;

Parents you might like to:

i. talk with the children about the passing of time - how it seems to pass that much slower when you are younger;
ii. investigate and explain all about the different time zones of somewhere like America or Asia.
iii. compare time scales - in geology with that of kings and queens say;
iv. list all the things you and the children can do in five minutes;
v. explore ways of estimating unaided a second, a minute, an hour;
vi. devise a time line for your family;
vii. explain the phrase "doing the books".

Staff you might like:

i. explore some of the proverbs and aphorisms associated with time;
ii. consider different types of time keeping devices the children could make - candles, water clocks, pendulums;
iii. explore fully the meaning of words like era, generations, universal time (UT) / coordinated universal time(UTC), calendars; the moveable religious feasts and festivals
iv. devise experiments for children to estimate the passage of time e.g. keeping quiet for a minute and a half. Writing/ doing an excercise (or similar activity) for ten minutes;
v. to encourage the children to write some time related stories e.g. parallel time;
vi. explore the arithmetic of time by starting to find what times you can and cannot measure with 11 and 7 minute timers! Other timers?
vii. explore the phrase "in keeping with your generation" - what other phrases mean the same thing?