School Days – down on school sports

This week’s School Days have been up and down.  One moment there’s some great highs, the next and there’s a downer on everything that’s gone on that day.  I’m dreading teenage years if this is what is can be like at age 5. Thankfully most of the time N’s pretty stable emotionally and doesn’t whinge that frequently, so I’m hoping this is a one week blip.

House teams and school sports

N’s school have houses (well, they might be called teams), and at the beginning of the year we had a bit of confusion thinking he would be in the green house which all 6 of his cousins had been or were in.  But N was in the yellow team.  He wasn’t worried, he was in with his best friend. In fact I think his cousins were more put out, and I was quite sad that he was the only one in the family not in green.  The children get tokens for their house whenever they get VIP, star or learner of the week awards, then the totals get totted up at the end of the year for the winning team. The yellow team have just overtaken the greens for the lead, so it’s very tense.

But for sports day, N’s year are too uneven with too many in the yellow team, so N and his best friend have been temporarily moved to the green team.  This means we have to buy t-shirts in that colour (because who has a green t-shirt?!) and they’ll be potentially winning for a team that’s not theirs….well, N’s best friend because he’s the fast one in the year.

I didn’t think N would be too worried about it, but he spent one evening saying he hated sports day and he wouldn’t do it unless he could be in the yellow team.  I was surprised, but I suppose he has been yellow all year, and wants to help his own team win.

Thankfully 2 days later, he told me that i had to buy his green t shirt and that he would still try hard for the greens.  Hopefully being in the same team as his 2 cousins has helped soothe the worry.

Tennis

After loving tennis from the 1st time he played, this week has also had him saying he hated tennis and never wanted to play it again.  I’m not sure where it came from, but they had a week off from after school club, so he ended up doing multisports and athletics instead.  He seemed to enjoy that, and told me they’d been practising throwing balls.  He understands he needs to carry on til the end of term because the after school tennis is paid for.  I’m just hoping that next year he’ll want to continue because I don’t want him to hate school sports.

Learning musical instruments

We’ve had the letters home about putting children’s names down to learn musical instruments next year.  I’d love N to learn something because I’m a big believer that learning music (in particular something structured like classical music) really helps with personal skills, team work, discipline, motivation, and also school work.  Previously N did say he wanted to learn the piano – I was thinking more ukelele, but at least with piano I can help him.  But now the form’s come home he said no, so we’ll wait another year, or maybe ask him again in September.  The school only guarantee lessons for Year 2 or 3 and older, so he’d be on a waiting list. Maybe next year he’ll have a better idea of what he might like to learn.

Reading books

After seeming to go backwards to really short, repetitive, dull reading books, we’re back again to books like those he was reading before half term. Thank god!  They’re now with phonics that he comes across less often so he’s having to work harder, but once we find books that interest him it really does help.

N has been a bit upset that his phonics group aren’t learning the same things as the main group.  That group seem to be nearly at the end of stage 3 phonics, while N’s have only just started this week, so I’m not sure they’re going to get through it all by the end of the year.  I need to get out the flashcards and see if I can help N move him along with some of the others, because I don’t want him to not have enough time to take them in and practise them and then forget them all over the summer.

Learner of the week

I was really proud of N to see he won learner of the week this time.  I think he’s only had it once before right in the first or second term. This time it was for enthusiasm at trying new maths activities and tackling them well, as well as his number recognition improving. Usually he just gets VIP for things like tidying up or helping out, nice to haves for well rounded children. But I think getting this for school work will help his confidence and show that if he does practise and work hard, then he’ll get rewards.