School Days – VIPs and junk modelling

This week’s School Days post is a little low on insight this week. Damn that N was ill on Sunday and therefore couldn’t be back at school until Tuesday.

VIP x2

N was awarded VIP 2 days on the trot this week.  We think for focusing and working hard, but I’m not convinced N was quite sure.  He was very pleased with himself and was quite gutted that he didn’t get it again on Friday.  Although more annoyed that on Friday none of the year 1s in his class got it because 2 reception children got VIP instead.

Still no star of the week – it does make me wonder what they get that for (or Learner of the week – although he has had that this school year once).  It’s always harder for the year 1s I think, a) because they’ve got 18 in their year while the other year groups range from 8 to 15, and b) because his group of year 1s stretch across the 2 classes which means it’s harder for teachers to see the work they’re doing across both classes.

Dinosaurs

The dinosaur topic work continued.  N took in his encyclopaedia to show the dinosaur pages, although then forgot to bring it home afterwards.

Dinosaurs have also been on his mind at home.  We’ve been talking about fossils and dinosaurs. It’s the first time N’s really been interested.  And amazingly he’s been doing his own free writing at home.  All so he could achieve a full row of stickers for writing on his reward chart.  So I had 3 sentences about different dinosaurs and another 3 sentences about farm animals and the noises they make.  He was really proud of it and I was too.  Being inspired at school is what I want to happen for N because that’s the only way children want to learn more.  I know the OH didn’t find anything of interest at school and to me that was a failing of the teachers not recognising that there was something he was interested in and they didn’t bring it out in him (history). So I’m relieved that N is excited by the things he’s learning.

End of term church service

Each term the school have a church service. But this one was in the school hall because the church roof is being fixed due to stolen lead.  Each class does a ‘show’, and N’s class this time performed a poem complete with actions.  N told me that even the day before they’d not learn it. But given he performed it for me on Friday evening in bed, I’d say they must have practised it a few times because N was word perfect.

We did have a discussion about poetry though. After he told me what they’d done, I said ‘that was  a poem then’.

‘No. Not a poem, you write those down not speak them’

‘Yes, you recite a poem and that’s what you did’.

‘No, you can write them’.  He wasn’t for turning, insistent you couldn’t read poems out.

Junk modelling

I thought once N was out of foundation stage, there would be no more junk modelling brought home.  But no, year 1 and it seems N has decided to go bigger (and not always better).  So far this year we’ve had 3 large (imagine large vegetable supermarket boxes) brought home, 2 just with boxes and no discernable improvements to them. One made it into the house, the other was being driven around in the boot of the car.  But then Friday he walked out with what looked like a sail boat with 2 masts and flags, but which he said was a racing car. We managed to squeeze it into the car, and then I discovered that when the tube masts were taken off to avoid damage, about 25 straws fall out all over the car. I despair.  Let’s just say that the box and mast found it’s way to the tip at the weekend, although the straws are currently still in the back of the car.

Spellings

As N was off sick on Monday, he missed having this week’s spellings stuck into his spelling book.  Of course I intended to check with the teacher but kept forgetting.  So this weekend I was frantically trying to find out from other mums firstly if they had the same spellings for the whole class, and when N eventually told me the year 1s from his class had fewer and different ones, then texted round to get hold of them.  N just told me he wouldn’t need to do the test, but I think he should at least try.  But he seems very bored of them, compared with normal, that I don’t think he’ll be doing as well as he usually does.