'Can it be a competition?" queries a confident six-year old, as she knuckles down to drawing a picture of the gingerbread man. It's a refrain which comes readily to the lips of many of my senior infants, who seem to have a keenly developed competitive strain despite their tender years. It matters not a hoot that the prizes are inconsequential little trinkets - the allure of victory has already ensnared them.

This striving for perfection at a young age seems to be primarily the domain of little girls, but after a few years avarice tugs at the hearts of boys too. I sometimes feel that some De Medici blood flows in my veins, as I am regularly required to do minor money-changing transactions for the other teachers. They are aware of the magnetic appeal of hard cash, and entice their charges into submission and sedulity by the promise of financial reward. One does the best one can!

Mention of magnets reminds me of the wonderful time we had on primary science day and what magic we performed with the aptly named wand magnets. I enjoyed the excited expressions of the infants as they had their first informal lesson in the scientific tenet that likes repel and opposites attract.

The classroom was positively buzzing with magnetism as objects careered crazily along desktops and pupils crawled frenetically under tables. Harry Potter never had such fun.

More fun of a different kind started this week. It is called The Christmas Concert, and it is decidedly unscientific. Everybody wants to be Santa or an elf or a snowflake and nobody wants to be boring angels or shepherds. Can it be that secularism is making even more inroads than we realise? No, its just that we've moved on from the straightforward Nativity play of other years and the costumes offer more exotic possibilities. You see, for a senior infant child, it's all about appearances.