School days – class dog and giraffes

This week was the first full week back at school.  N took it all in his stride. He doesn’t seem (at home at least), to really have ups and downs at the start or end of terms. He just gets on with it, and we would rarely know any different.  Onto this week’s School Days.

Handwriting

N’s handwriting is still hit and miss. Sometimes it’s really neat, others it’s wild ,and sometimes he writes it so small noone is going to be able to read it.  He also still doesn’t form all of his letters correctly. They still print their handwriting although have been doing handwriting practice for the last 2 years.

N announced during his english homework this week ‘we’re allowed to do joined up writing now if we’re year 2’, and then proceeded to agonisingly slow write one of his sentences.  Thankfully he reverted back so it was more legible and he could finish it.

I think handwriting practice has been good for N because it’s made him form his letters better, however there’s still a lot he needs to work on and I think when they’re doing speed work, cursive writing is going to slow him down too much for a while.

The class dog

Last week, N’s name (after a false start) was pulled out of the hat to take the class dog home. N has been talking about the dog all year and had hoped to get it over a longer holiday or on his birthday. Of course he got it on the one weekend we had absolutely nothing planned, not even swimming or tennis was back that weekend.

So Monty the dog went food shopping, went in the car wash (in the car), and we got over my brother to do some metal detecting and Monty went too along with N.  Photos duly printed off on Monday, that meant N had extra homework – the write up in Monty’s diary.  That’s one piece of homework he definitely wasn’t moaning about doing.

New girl

The new term has seen a new girl arrive in N’s year (and younger sibling further down the school).  N’s class does seem to get new starters compared with other classes, so we’re back up again (after we’d almost been back down at year capacity).  Having a girl come in is a bit of a novelty, because there had been only 1 girl left.  So hopefully that’ll help a bit with the other girl being slightly less overwhelmed by the boys. Surprisingly N actually knew her name – usually he’s terrible with names, so hers had obviously stuck.

Reference books and giraffes

N usually prefers fiction books, but this week some non-fiction reading books have been coming home with him. The latest was about going on safari. N got very excited whenever a fact slot was pulled out. And when the book mentioned that giraffes have 7 bones in their neck, he happily told me that was the same as humans. I’ve no idea where he got that information (I didn’t know that), but turns out it was from Operation Ouch.

Tennis

It was also back to tennis this week and N was player of the week.  With only 4 of them who turned up from their class it was a bit short of players. And disappointingly, the player of the week trophy hadn’t been brought back again which meant he couldn’t take it home. That’s twice in the last year he’s won he’s not been able to take it home.  His proposed solution – ‘when someone forgets it more than 2-3 times, they can’t take it home again, they just have to have a print out photo of it. Then noone else misses out’. Kids are funny sometimes.