School Days – a rainy sports day

This week was sports day. After the worry about it from last week, I needn’t have worried – the rest of the week went as smoothly too.

Sports day

As well as sports day, the school had Sports Week where the children could wear sportswear to school. I assume they would do extra sport, but I couldn’t see where they might have done. It was a bit traumatic (and expensive) at the start of the week, but more of that in an upcoming post.

The wearing of sports clothes itself was a hard enough challenge but finding a green t-shirt for his new house team was harder than I thought it was going to be. One pale green t shirt (which could be worn again in future) purchased although on the day it looked a bit more turquoise-y blue from a distance.

The sports day I remember of my youth (mortifyingly bad and therefore out of my mind for infants – n juniors having moved house and school I suddenly because one of the contenders for the serious races and field events) had parents on chairs and benches and that was it. Our school have refreshments for sale for fundraising, everyone brings along picnic blankets and camping chairs and it’s all very sociable and jolly for the parents. It was a great opportunity to catch up with people, as well as cheer on our children…and others we knew in the different years.

The children had been practising for sports day for a couple of weeks, and N was feeling ok about doing it. The practising also meant that N knew exactly which boys would be placing in his race. With 16 boys in the class, it meant the boys had to have 2 races for foundation stage rather than the usual 1 race.

N was in the second group to race and he had all 3 of the fastest boys in his race. I don’t know how they split the race, it didn’t seem to be by birthday or by alphabet, and I’d be surprised if it was by speed. But N gave every race a go, he was happy to line up, prepare and race, and he didn’t come last in any of the races I saw. They had to do running race, bounce the ball race (yes, I was surprised at seeing this one. Some of the really small foundation stage looked as If the ball was the same size as their heads), skipping race (with hoops for the younger children), egg and spoon, and balancing race. The sack race was aborted due to the weather, which they battled on through.

I left as the rain got worse because I had my Britmums Live conference to get to, but it was lovely to have seen him sitting under their shelter with all of his class, chatting and watching the other races. It does make me a bit sad though that he doesn’t seem to be in a ‘gang’ where some of the boys, even those who’ve come in later in the school year, are well in with the in crowd even at age 5. But then, I was never like that until secondary school when we were in a ‘nice’ tutor group where a big group of us all got on really well, and across different classes as well. Hopefully he’ll find his tribe as he goes through the school.

The only downside was that his dad didn’t come and watch. It was just slightly embarrassing to answer other parents and say that no he wasn’t coming. That despite the fact that both brother in laws managed to take a 1/2 hour off their work on the farm to pop down and watch the 2 cousins. Thankfully N doesn’t really ask much anymore, but it does put a lot more pressure on me to be there for as much as possible.

Tennis club

After last week when N announced that he no longer wanted to play tennis, he’s had another turn around again. Yes, he’s back to loving tennis again. He loves the tennis club coach (and still goes on about Andy, the other coach who used to teach them in school time last term) so I’m hoping that he’ll want to keep it up. I think that probably means we’ll need to join the local club because I’m unlikely to be able to get him to other local tennis lessons outside of school.

According to N, this week they did a lot of hitting the ball and catching. If you got the ball over the net you could keep hitting, if you missed you had to go the other side of the net and throw and catch the balls. Supposedly he didn’t do much catching. And even more surprisingly (because I’ve not yet seen him play), he and his partner were asked to demo how well they’d been doing. After my shockingly out of practice performance at mini tennis at my blogging conference, I’m thinking I’ll be the one needing extra lessons.

Fainting

One day this week there was a lot of buzz around because one of the girls fainted on the concrete. The ambulance arrived, and it sounds like there was a lot of chatter about it, as you’d expect from interested children.

It’s meant a lot of questions this week from N about fainting and hurting bit of your body. I love how children learn and ask questions from prompts. I’d never know what to tell him about off my own back, so it’s handy when things pique his interest.

He’s wanted to know why people faint, why they stay asleep on the floor (I’m presuming the girl was unconscious for a bit), why they are kept warm, how poorly are they, if it means they hurt their arm and what parts of the body you can break. I’ve tried to answer as many as possible, and even told him about the one time I fainted in the shower at 6th form (bout of glandular fever that I didn’t know about until after my A levels, and 2 hours later I was off playing in a tennis match). By the end of the week, all seemed to have been forgotten and there were no more questions on the fainting front.

VIP

N was a VIP again this week, again for good work with numbers. It seems N really enjoys maths especially the practical side of it. He surprised me this weekend by counting to 40 (still missing out 15 though – argghhh) and saying what numbers were in 100.

New House team

With the concern over changing house team last week, it turns out that it’s not just temporary for sports day, but an ongoing change. Moving to the green team works out quite well for N. It means he’s in with his best friend, in with his cousins, and in with his friend and neighbour who he goes to after school club with. The only disappointing bit is that despite everyone saying that the green team always win the most tokens for the year, this year yellow (his old team) have overtaken them and are in the lead. A lot of yellow team children were winning at sports day, so it’s sad that all the tokens that N has achieved over the year have gone towards a team he’s no longer in, and for a team that are looking like they might win the year.

Although N’s so uncompetitive, I don’t think he’d ever notice.

#SchoolDays linky

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