School Days – Harvest Festival and awards

Time’s marching on.  I can’t believe we’re nearly at half term, and I’ve now realised how inconvenient school really is at holiday time.

Despite both of N’s old nurseries running holiday clubs, the likelihood is that I’m going to end up over Christmas taking 2 weeks off, even though we don’t do much special at Christmas because we’re on a farm that has to work all year round.

Here’s hoping I’ve got friends around who also want to do stuff, and places that N and I can go and visit.  Plus I’ll be praying for no snow so we can get out and about!

School’s still going well for N on the whole.  He’s still enjoying it, and I’m surprised at how much he really is remembering to tell me.  Even though he says he can’t remember.

I’ve found out which children have been sent to see the head mistress for naughty behaviour, who’s been on time out (they sit with an egg timer in front of them. Boring!), which older children have been helping him cut up lunch when needed, and lots more irrelevant but amusing little titbits of information.

He’s even scorned the fact that I don’t know who some of the teachers are (I think they’re actually TAs because there’s only one of the 4 teachers I don’t recognise, but N doesn’t care. As far as he’s concerned, I know less than him.

There’s been a few big things happening over the last week, both good and bad.

Bullying

It sounds like the kicking and hitting from the other child is still happening but less often.  I’d hoped after N was grown up enough to tell the teacher that it happened on Monday, it would stop.  The child was put on time out, but N did say it happened again on 2 days.  He doesn’t seem too worried about it now, hopefully because the teacher’s more aware and has pulled the child up on it.  I’m hoping the parents have been told though – the mum hasn’t spoken to me which I know I would if it had been my child, so I’m not sure.

It sounds like there’s several children being a bit generous with their hitting and kicking.  So I’m hoping N stays out of it, and doesn’t start returning the punches (is it bad to hope that maybe one time he does to stop it in its tracks, without getting caught! I kind of want him to show he’s not a wuss, but I don’t want him to think that’s acceptable).  There was me thinking that boys are more straightforward and easier than girls when it comes to friendships, but with 14 in the year (out of 17) I suppose not.

Second VIP

N’s also just had his second VIP sticker. It’s daily and a couple of children from each class (usually each year, but on his day it was 2 reception year children) get chosen to be VIPs following good behaviour, living the school values etc.

It’s not as big as being star of the week (voted by the kids but no idea what kind of thing for) or learner of the week, for which they get a certificate.  But with VIP awards it means you get to fast track into lunch, the table is laid for them, and they get to go out quicker to play afterwards.  Let’s face it, anything that gets N in to food quicker is always going to be a winner for him.

Harvest Festival

It was harvest festival this week and each class were singing or doing poetry performances.  N’s been practising their Dingle Dangle scarecrow song all week, and was going on at me checking that I’d got permission from my boss and would be there.

I did manage to work my hours so I could be there and he was so pleased to see me.  It wouldn’t be so bad, but I’ve also had a letter saying he’s reached a target certificate (how, I’d like to know, because the list of targets looked way away for him at the moment) and am invited to next week’s assembly to collect it.  If I’d known further in advance, I’d have asked him to choose which one he wanted me to go to but no chance of that.

The harvest festival itself was really sweet (and not as painful as I might have though having to listen to lots of young children sing).  I think N’s class are lacking some confident dramatic girls, as the majority are boys who probably are quite shy and not into singing in public.  N spent most of his time hiding behind the boy next to him although he did actually sing which I was impressed about.

Learner of the week

According to N (and another child who’s way ahead of him in terms of reading and writing), they’ve not done any formal learning, phonics, alphabet and numbers.  N even tells me he’s not done anything on the topic of the week.  But it turns out they have because N came home on Friday with a certificate for Learner of the Week in his book bag.

Of course, he seemed a bit blase about it. It’s a certificate not jumping up the lunch queue!  But it’s very exciting for me to see that he’s been working hard and listening. He got it for work on the topic of sea creatures they were doing, and for listening out well for the sounds.  A mystery for me, but he’s enjoying school and obviously doing what he’s told and joining in when necessary.

So it’s been a largely good week, no items of clothing lost, and he even managed to have a late tea at the pub with us on Friday.  Usually he’s really sleepy on Fridays after school but he managed really well once he was in the pub with fish and chips on a plate in front of him.

How’ve your children (or you) been getting on this week?

Linking up with Jaime at Magic Moments