School days – shoes, spelling and harvest festival

Bit of a late one on the School Days post this week.  It’s been my birthday weekend, and let’s just say 2 late nights means not a lot of blogging has been going on.

School this week has been a really good one for N.  Year 1 is going well, and although he’s getting the easier introduction to it by staying in the lower year split, it does mean that he’s able to enjoy it without it being too much of a shock.  I think being top of a class is doing wonders for his confidence to, in school and similarly in swimming, being one of a couple who know what’s going on and can show what they can do.

Lunches

N has free school lunches as part of the government scheme for younger school children. Handy for me, and he’s quite happy to get to choose what he can have ahead of time.  But he’s had a few days where he came home telling me he didn’t have a lunch band and the teacher had to find some food for him.  I couldn’t understand it because I’d booked his lunches before the deadline for the term, and had the email confirmation of his choices.  Their school have red (meat), green (veggie), blue (other – usually pasta, jacket potatoes etc) or I think there’s now a packed lunch option.  But he had been given the food we’d ordered so I didn’t know what he was talking about.

A quick chat to the office saw that he wasn’t coming out on the teacher’s print out list for handing out bands, although he was down on the office list.  So it was a fluke he’d had the food he was meant to.  So the rest of the week they must have found his name because he’s been saying he was on the Class 2 list with most of the other year 1s instead of his Class 1.  Never mind though, because as long as he has the food we chose, all is good.

Spelling tests

Spelling tests are a bit of a mystery at the moment.  N had his first spellings to learn at the start of the week.  So he looked, covered and spelt them out (I’m not sure how he’ll be able to do them silently in a test though because as he spells he says them out loud).  I presumed they’d have a test in school, but N told me they’d already done it.  So I’ve no idea about that, and no idea if they’re meant to carry on learning them each day for the week, or just in time for the ‘test’.

Still, he managed to get them all right so I was pleased about that.  All the ‘sh’ words like shop, ship, wish and wish etc.

Shoes don’t fit

4 weeks into school and N decided his trainers and school shoes didn’t fit.  The shoes that were bought 3 weeks before school started. And he, the child whose feet grow about half a size each year!

So a mad dash into Brantano after school on Monday where the shop assistant measured him and checked the shoes.  To find that there was still enough room in both shoes so we’ll just check again at half term.

Reading to teachers

I don’t know how other schools do it, but N currently has 2 books come home 3 times a week to read.  They’re still really basic books (the same level he was reading before the summer holidays), and I’m praying he’ll move up a level any time soon because while he’s finishing 2 books in under 5 minutes because they’re now so easy for him, he’s not really being challenged, or learning new words in them.

I was more worried that he told me he’d not yet read to any adults.  Quite often when I’d check with him last year, he’d tell me there wasn’t time to get to him, but this year there’s only 6 or 7 year ones in his class, so that’s not too many children to be hearing read.  So a quick question in his reading record, and he’ been listened to that day.  They’re meant to do group reading several times a week and then reading to adults twice a week. Fingers crossed that does still happen because that’s the only way he’ll get proper guidance on how to learn new words where I don’t know how to explain the phonic in the same way as at school.

Learner of the week and VIP

I was so happy for N this week.  After all the hard week he’s done on his reading, writing, homework, and maths, he was awarded Learner of the Week for his year.  Not only that, but from the Class 2 teacher – for maths work he’d done in her class when his year 1s had gone up to the other class.

He was also a VIP one day as well, similarly for the work he was doing.  I think he’s now realising the benefits of working hard, and how much he can do.  Long may it continue.

He also completed his whole reward sheet at home this week too, so we’re onto a new week, have reassessed what he can get stickers for and now need to get him the reward toy that he had asked for.

Harvest Festival

This week was harvest festival and each class was singing a song.  I’m not sure how much N actually sang during the performance because whenever I asked him what they were singing, he just told me it was his teacher’s favourite song, sang 2 lines and then said he couldn’t remember it.

After I picked him up, he was straight over to the horse chestnut tree along with other children and they were gathering in the conkers, filling his school bag.