School days – house tokens and dance
Last week was a quiet school week. Not a lot going on, just more of the same.  I’m not getting that many exciting conversations about school anymore. Although we still have our bedtime chat about what each of us have done that day, N’s version is a list of lesson times…register, assembly, English, break, maths, lunch, lunchbreak etc. Boring and limited detail unless he all of a sudden remembers something strange or that he believes was wrong.
Here’s this week’s School days goings on.
Best friends
There seems to have been a change in who N is calling his best friend (outside the family). We did the birthday interview last week and 2 different names popped up. What I hear though is that they really have a mish mash of people to play with at breaktimes. It doesn’t seem to be focused on the people for N, but more what game is being played. So at the moment it’s all about hide and seek poke. A bizarre sounding name, given the previous version was hide and seek tag. But most of the playground games seem to be played across years and even key stages, which is lovely to hear. When I think back to my school days, even at primary school, unless we were playing a game of netball in the playground, games were always within age groups.
Group work
This week N tells me they’ve been working in groups on their literacy. So rather than making up individual stories they’re working together to make up stories, a variation on the book of the week/fortnight. It’s Owl Babies at the moment, and that’s led to the prospect of a trip to a nearby secondary school to find out about owls.
N’s version of similes for homework to feed into the group work, were interesting and a bit off the wall, but at least he knows the concept. He likes grammar because it’s more factual and logical than creative writing. Although I did catch him writing a poem the other day, so maybe he’s becoming more open to the creative side of things.
Dance
N’s funny. He won’t go to the school discos ‘they’re loud and dark and full of everyone just running and jumping around’. But he loves to have a dance at home.
They tend to do a bit of dance in PE at the moment. He doesn’t seem to concerned about doing it, although maybe that’s because it’s got an exercise aspect to it which he likes.  This week supposedly it was more like dance and gymnastics. They were working in pairs and had to be like an animal moving up high and down low. N and his partner were cats, and I had an interesting show of what they were doing as cats. Hmm, not sure N has the performing gene, but I’m glad he’ll give it a go.
That’s one thing that’s great with school. From what I can tell, if the teachers and school say to do something then he’ll do it. Whereas trying to get him to join in with things out of school is so much harder.
House tokens
N’s house team are very behind compared with the other 3 teams. He was given a token for helping tidy up the other day. It’s just a shame he won’t do the tidying up at home.
It’ll be interesting to see what goes on this week, given we’re already in the fast run up to half term in 2 weeks time.
What have your children been up to at school recently?