WHEN staff at a school heard the sounds of youngsters crying during a cookery class, they were naturally concerned.

But when they rushed into the reception class at Pocklington's Montessori School, they learned it was not a spill or a burn that had the four and five-year-olds in tears...but a humble onion.

Opening windows and handing out paper tissues failed to dampen the flow, until enterprising teacher Carol Hall hatched a cunning plan.

The next week, only laughter could be heard after Mrs Hall gave every youngster a pair of coloured goggles.

"We thought the aliens had landed," said principal Rosie Pressland. "They were there happily having found a solution."

The children had been preparing apple, carrot and onion soup when the curse of the chopping board first struck.

Mrs Pressland said: "We were in the office, which is next door to the kitchen, and we heard all this crying. The poor little people didn't know what to do with themselves and the onion tears were running copiously."

Mrs Hall said: "The tears started to come and they were crying. The smell really got to them and children being children they wiped their faces and it made them more irritated.

"It ended up with me chopping all the onions and this bothered me because that is not what we are about. The children should be doing the onions."

Mrs Pressland said: "Carol is an incredibly committed teacher who could not cope with her children being upset in any way, so she went away and pondered it over the weekend and came up with the idea of goggles."

Mrs Hall's initially thought about kitting the youngsters out in sunglasses before deciding swimming goggles were the answer.

Mrs Hall said: "The hilarious thing is when they took them off, they left all these imprints on their faces. But it worked and it worked so well.

"We told the children that they would have to tell their mummies to wear swimming goggles when they are chopping onions.

"We had a good laugh because we were basically stood there cooking in our swimming goggles. Cooking is meant to be fun and in the end we weren't crying due to onions, we were crying with laughter due to the state of their eyes."

Mrs Hall was given a bottle of champagne for solving the tearful problem and swimming goggles have since become an essential part of both swimming and cookery lessons.

Updated: 10:12 Friday, November 12, 2004