School days – poetry and animal care

Another week of school days has passed and we’re only a couple of weeks until half term. This year certainly is rapidly speeding by. Here’s this week’s school days.

Poetry competition

N’s school this year are doing a poetry competition. Each stage of the school and class has been assigned and each child has to learn the poem off by heart and perform it in class. N’s class have in the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan, not one of my preferred poets. He’s managed to learn the poem off by heart but trying to get him to put a bit of oomph into it and action isn’t really happening. The top performer in each class will then go through to compete against other classes and there ends off with a regional competition for those who go through.

I don’t think there’s any danger of N winning. To be honest if they can hear what he’s saying I’ll be astounded. He certainly not inherited my personal speaking gene. Some work still to do.

They did get to practice in the church service as groups on Friday. And N seemed happy enough doing this.

Origami shop

This week’s N has been talking a lot about an origami shop that he and a handful of other children seem to have decided they are going to have. It sounds like N has it all planned out and according to him he was the brain’s behind it. He’s deadly serious about it.  It stemmed from the origami they did in school the other week.

He’s requested a a wooden board to create a sign and each of the children have a different origami item to make. Supposedly they’re going to be selling paper aeroplanes, paper drinking cups, fortune tellers and paper butterflies. I suggested maybe they should be selling different paper for the purpose of teaching other people how to do origami. Given that the point of origami is that people enjoy making it themselves.

I’m quite pleased that he’s showing some entrepreneurial spirit. What with his origami shop as well as his farm based car wash business. And that he’s managed to pull together a little team who’re all behind the one goal, even if it’s a little off the right track ideawise.

He did mention the other day that one of the boys had said that there was a man called Bob who was against their shop. I’m not sure what that’s about but I did have to convince him that no one else can really stop them giving something a go especially when it’s just a few kids having a bit of harmless fun. It’s not quite the friendship bracelets that we used to sell when we were children, but hey, I’m happy he’s trying to plan something even if it doesn’t quite work out.

Recorder playing

The recorder playing has been severely lacking at home recently. Probably not helped by the fact that N seems to have lost the booklet with the actual music in. It doesn’t seem to have done his playing much damage. This week he was given his next bead for being able to play the next piece of music they have learnt.

Swimming

Whoop. N came home from school on Tuesday announcing that he had swim 25m on his front and back at school. It’s taking a while for him to get the strengths and want to do any distance on his front so I’m really pleased he’s finally managed to do it. It’s just a shame I wasn’t there to see it. And he doesn’t seem to have the option to have a badge or certificate for doing so so I’m hoping the information will feed through to his normal swimming teacher and will be able to get hold of a badge. He did say it was really hard going but was so proud that he done it.

Veterinary classes

Year 2 and 3 in the last three Fridays of this half term are having the Blue Cross coming to talk to them about pet care. They had the first session this week although I’m none the wiser as to what was discussed. According to N not a lot was said so let’s hope we actually learn something next week.

What’s been going on with your children at their schools over the last week and in the run up to half term holiday?