School Days – hockey and playground friends
It was N’s birthday run up this week and at the end of the week he came down with the start of a cold. It didn’t seem to impact his school efforts, but he was quite tired. More so than usual (never helped by his early morning exploits, and when he’s not 100%, his midnight wanderings into bed with me).
Here’s this week’s school days.
Hockey
N’s school might be small, but they make the most of bringing in outside sports coaches to run after school clubs and different sports sessions for the classes through the year. Tuesday is always PE, usually indoors, for N’s year. On Thursdays they usually have a session outdoors with an outside coach. It’s usually football, but this term it seems they’re doing hockey.
N is pretty good with a golf club at connecting with the ball, so I think hockey might be another sport he could take to. We’ve certainly had experience in our family, with both myself and my brother playing a lot in our youth.
I think they played unihoc the week before as it was indoors. N explained that the sticks could hit flat both sides. But this week told me they’d played ice hockey. I’m not sure that’s quite right, but it was defnitely normal hockey sticks, so maybe it was just cold and icy outside!
Science experiments
N definitely enjoys the more logical and practical lessons at school. He goes up to Class 2 with his year group for topic work, and they seem to be doing well rounded work on different areas. Recently there seems to have been talk about the weather, earth, sun, moon and other geographical type of topics. But last week they did some science experiments involving water on colours – watercolour pencils possibly – to see how far the colour would travel. I’m presuming on chromatic paper, but N is always a bit blurry on details. I’ll be looking forward to seeing his topic work at some point. We only usually have literacy and maths books set out for parents evening and open mornings, so I’m not sure what they’ve done on topic work in reality. Just what N has relayed and I’ve had to guess.
They certainly do more exciting science work than we did at primary school. I don’t remember anything specifically science based apart from in the older years being presented with a sprat fish, and we were allowed to cut them up. I don’t remember doing anything else around the topic.
Dinosaurs
This week there was yet more dinosaur work. And more mutterings of a dinosaur museum trip with no information so it could all be guesswork or hoping on N’s part.
N is never that keen on their weekly ‘Big Write’. They do small bits of writing during the week and then on Fridays, it’s the big write. As far as I can tell, they have a time set and have to write as much as possible in that time about their set literacy subject that week. This week N told me he had to write 4 sentences about the dinosaur put up, and that it was easy this week. I’m glad he does have some positives about doing writing on occasion.
Playground friends
I think N is struggling at the moment with friends in the playground. He has a few friends, but he’s put out when they do their own thing. He’s got a good friend in his class, but told me that ‘G just plays his own game’. His best friend just ‘walks around the playground’ with the older girl he likes (N is very scornful of this). And his cousin plays with 2 friends in a ‘jail game that’s only for 3 people’. I try and tell him that he could ask to play with the others, and that the older girl will leave at the end of the year, but he just thinks that he can’t join in rather than asking.
Hopefully he’ll just get on with playing with various other children, or get wise to suggesting other games more of them can play together.
Multiplication
This week they’ve started doing multiplication. Well, arrays, and lots of 2s. N seems to be grasping it, and hasn’t complained that maths is difficult unlike his writing, so that’s reassuring.
Ah bless him playtime is always tricksy when your friends play games you dont like! Roll on the sunshine
It’s great that they do so much sport at his school. That’s the one thing I don’t like about my daughter’s primary. They rarely even do one PE lesson a week! They used to do the Big Write at her school too! It’s good to hear N is getting to grips with his multiplication and here’s hoping he gets his trip to see the dinosaurs!
I thought they had to do PE. I don’t know how much they do later in the school, although they all definitely do Thursday afternoons, then swimming for the older years, and at the moment they seem to have either tennis or dance on Fridays too – with the older ones doing dance. They have a sports council at school too, where some of the older ones get nominated on to it, and they do their own activities and sporting ideas with the younger children on rotation.
I think legally they’re supposed to do it twice a week. It’s rare they even do it once a week at our school and I’m not sure how that’s happened. At least she’ll have lots at secondary school, but the lack of sport at primary will mean she has some catching up to do, particularly against the girls who’ve been to private school 🙁
Yes, my private school was really good for sports. 3 afternoons a week (could be matches twice a week) and team practice twice a week too. I loved it, but even those who’d not liked sport at secondary school, enjoyed it once they were in a smaller environment. We only had girls in the 6th form when I was there – I’m sure it’s very different now with girls all through.
She has had her dancing at least, so she’s getting the exercise part of it.
It’s funny how children learn to play over time, he will soon be a happy chappy full of confidence in the yard x
I think he’s just annoyed that his friends are off doing boring things. Once it’s summer and they’re all out playing football on the field together again he’ll be fine.