School days – reading books and party excitement

This week school’s been relatively quiet compared to the last few weeks.  N’s school days have been more of the same although we’ve had a few conversations around working vs staying at home as a parent.

Reading books

I’m sure all parents who’ve had children learning to read have the same thing to say about children’s reading books when they’re starting out.  They’re sooooo dull.

N has Biff, Chip and Kipper books at home which I hate and he loves, but they’re nowhere near as dull as his reading books he brings home from school.  6 pages of trivial, repetitive and reversed sentences to avoid children guessing that every page says the same thing.  Our school uses Phonic Bugs Oxford Reading books which seem to be popular amongst quite a few of my friends’ children’s schools.  I can’t wait for the day when N is more confident at reading and will get proper stories and just more interesting things to read.  For him and me.  Because he hates them too which makes it hard to get him to read them to me.

Instead of reading the official book several times, it gets read once, then I try and persuade him to do a couple of pages , and then I encourage him to read some book titles or sentences in other books we’re reading.  So far that seems more palatable.

Party excitement

It turns out that our class are pretty good at responding to RSVPs to parties unlike others I’ve heard and written about.  We only needed to chase 3 people – 2 hadn’t received the invites (post and missing it in a drawer) and 1 had been ill.  But all responded by a day after deadline, and N seems happy with the children who can come…mostly!  He does like to chop and change his mind a lot so I never really know.

Quite a few of the mums have said their children were looking forward to it.  Being the first party of the school year, it feels a little bit pressured as the one that may end up leading the way (or not).  We’re fairly relaxed about the actual event – helped by getting someone in to do the entertainment which means a lot less stress and running about on the day.

Scooting to school

N’s always been used to being in pretty much full time nursery in the past, so doing a few morning clubs, and after school club most days was going to be the norm for him.  He’s sometimes stated the comparison between some children at morning club vs those who walk to school with their parents.  And for assemblies or events where parents go into school that I can’t go to, he often asks whether my boss will let me go.

But for his birthday he got a micro scooter* and that prompted him to ask if we could park further out from school so he could scoot in.  I’m presuming he got the idea from his best friend who sometimes does that on his bike (with a self employed dad that means there’s a little more flexibility in doing do sometimes).  He wasn’t happy when I explained that we just don’t have time to do it.  Dropping off time can’t be earlier, and an extra 5 minute walk back to the car wherever it might be doesn’t work for me getting into work on time.  Hopefully he understands why (I had to explain all my hours which are a bit complicated because I compress them to have an early finish one day to do school pick up), but I’m sure I’ll get more questions in future.

VIP

N was VIP for his class again, with the bonus that as VIP you get early in to lunch and early out to play.  But he was more excited that it was a Friday and therefore they’re allowed to choose where they sit for lunch, rather than the rest of the week where they have specific tables and people.

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