School days – performing arts and sports day

This week was a busy one for N at school. A week which included sports day and a performing arts festival, meant serious logistics planning for various t-shirts, props and any other things that he needed to be in school with.

Here’s this week’s school days.

Performing arts festival

N’s school is really lucky because their catchment secondary school partnership means that several times a year, each class gets to visit other schools to do skills sessions or school competitions in sport or music. This week, N’s class was going to one of the bigger primary schools to take part in the performing arts festival.

N’s class have been practising their performance for a couple of weeks and I’ve been hearing all about their 4 seasons act from N. Whether it be singing, doing the actions, or just telling me about who is doing what and how the practices were going. He was really looking forward to it which is unusual for something drama oriented. N would deny it, but I think he really does enjoy singing as he’s always singing day in day out, both made up random music or something he’s learnt at school.

We did have a panic the night before, when he informed me that he needed to have a yellow t-shirt for the performance. Supposedly he’d forgotten to tell me the day before, but a quick ask around on the mums Facebook page, reassured me that it didn’t really matter, and he could wear his PE t-shirt. In the end I sent him in with a green t-shirt in case a friend needed to wear it but N ended up wearing it anyway. It seemed that other parents knew less about it than I did as their children never tell them anything about what they’re doing in school.

It ended up being a bit of a shame because only N’s school turned up, which meant there was only two taking part instead of the 7 which should have been there. N didn’t seem bothered about this, he was just pleased that his school got judged the winners. He was convinced that even if the other 5 had turned up, his school still would have won.

VIP

N was awarded VIP again one day this week. I think it was for maths but he wasn’t very forthcoming whether that was actually the case or not.

Sports day

Luckily N likes sports day. I suppose it’s the chance to sit outside all afternoon see your parents in school, and cheer on your friends and your team members, even if you know you’re never going to get on the podium.

N has moaned quite a lot this year (and last) about his race for sports day. Because his year has so many boys, they run two boys races. Unfortunately for the last three years, he’s been put in a race with the three fastest boys in the year and there’s also a couple of others who are pretty sporty in their group of 7 or 8 running. From all the practicing beforehand N knows that he will never beat the other three in the running races, and it’s unlikely in any of the more fun races either. He’s always disappointed because he knows that he’d stand a chance if he was in the other race.  We can’t work out how they’ve split the races. I suggested that maybe they’d previously run a trial to split them into fastest and slower races, but it seemed to be random rather than that, and not based on birth date or name order either.

Thankfully it doesn’t put N off. He’ll still run, he’ll still enjoy sports day, and he gives it a go.

But this year he got on the podium for the first time in three years. For the egg and spoon race. N was in first place for some of the race until his friend noticed and sped past him. Then right on the line N dropped his egg and struggle to scoop it up while one of the other fastest children also went by him. He still third and got on that podium and he was so pleased to be up there.

N’s house team came fourth again like they do every year. They did get a few wins in races, but in some years there’s very few greens and when they have them, some are the ones who really struggle on sports day. So the team doesn’t stand much of a chance, compared to the other teams. But there’s always a great spirit on sports day, with all the children supporting those who don’t enjoy it so much and who struggle. Plus they get lollies afterwards, which they really needed in the heat this week.

Maths

I love to see N enjoying his maths. He whizzes through his homework and when he tells me at bedtime what he’s been doing in the day I caught off and get a demonstration of what exactly they’ve been learning about. Because who else has heard of a Carroll diagram? It turns out it’s a quadrant chart but when I suggested that N wasn’t having any of it. It’s reassuring that he can explain back to me exactly how they work something out or what it means and looks like. It’s good that he’s found a subject that he really enjoys at school and I hope that continues into secondary school.

A short and sweet school days for this week.

What have your children been up to this week in school?