School Days – adjectives and music lessons

I’m a day late with School Days this week – thanks to a busy weekend up in Manchester at Blog on Xmas conference. It was great fun although I have to admit my head is painful now due not drinking enough water, 2 late nights and a very hot building.  But here we are again.

Alien adjectives

Week N’s class have a theme for literacy, based around a book.  This week’s was Beegu, an alien story.  N’s homework this week was on adjectives, so they had to think of and write down 10 adjectives to describe the alien. I was quite impressed that N actually remembered what an adjective is, and that he was able to (with a bit of prompting) work out 10.

He seems to be so much more positive this year about his writing so I think he’s going to do ok…as long as he can remember what he needs to over time.

Spelling

N used to be really keen on doing his spellings, but he’s less so now. However, despite not working  at them more than  a couple of times over the week he was still getting ok marks in the weekly test. But last week, I managed to persuade him to do a bit more practice. And he was rewarded by a full 10/10. Whoop.  He was very chuffed with himself.  Of course that doesn’t seem to have continued into practising for the next set, but hopefully at some point he will remember the spellings he learnt into future weeks of learning them.

VIP

It was another VIP week. Go N. And he was very pleased because he was VIP on the same day that his cousin was given learner of the week.

Reading

So many times I mention reading. I think I’m obsessed because when I was at school, having only learnt to read when I started, I loved it so much I was up in older classes to pick out my books.  So I’m keen to get N into reading or at least confident enough about it.  It’s taken 3 weeks but he’s back reading at the same standard as he was back in the summer.  So hopefully now he’ll progress as he was before.  He was pleased because last week his year 4 cousin read his book to him.  So sweet.

N also did a mammoth ready of about 18 pages in one go the other evening.  I think it helps that rather than saying he has to read X number of pages, that we’ve changed to ‘read for 20-30 minutes’ and a set time.  N seems more relaxed doing that (although I might fudge the time a little). They are meant to do 15 minutes a day but N is so slow because he spends half the time studying the pictures, gazing around, discussing what Biff and Chip should be doing, or how stupid the baddies are, that it takes 30 minutes to get through about 12 pages.

He has however got wise to my tricks.  Me, if I had 3 pages left in a book, I’d want to get the book finished. N doesn’t care. If he’s done the 20 minutes, or read 12 pages, he’ll leave the end of the story unread!  So I read on after he’d left the table, and proclaimed how cool the ending was and how it was a total surprise.

‘Mummy, are you trying to trick me into coming back to read the rest?’.  Oops.  Caught.

Music lessons

I’ve always said I think N is quite musical.  Both my brother and I were/are, so I wouldn’t be surprised.  He’s always played the piano nicely and thoughtfully, with it never really sounding bad even as a toddler. And he can sing in tune (mostly) which not all young children can. But he refuses to learn an instrument, so I’ll just keep on asking him as he gets older if he wants to start.

They are doing music lessons in a session at school.  I thought it would just be banging away when told to, but last week they were learning musical beats and the different names.  I was impressed, he remembered all the counts I tested him on, except for quavers when he got a bit confused.  It sounds like year 2 is when they get recorders as well so maybe this is the precursor to that.  Lots of fun, and hopefully he’ll enjoy that once they happen.