School days: Year 4 in January

January’s been a bit of an odd month.  There’s quite a lot going on, but the weather has cancelled things, or there’s been changes in people which meant routines that have been in place for a couple of years have changed.  Here’s what we’ve been up to January’s School Days.

Parents Evening

Parents evening was good. I don’t really expect anything unusual to come out of it.  We know N’s handwriting has gone really OTT slanted and skinny. We can see in his handwriting book it was fine and legible one week then the next it changed.  He slants his book a long way over (no need as he’s not left handed), but he’s trying out a cartridge pen now in the hope that will make it a bit neater than using the standard handwriting pens they use. He wrote an immaculate thank you letter post-Christmas so I know he can do it. Just a shame he can’t write in funny coloured gel pens at school! Cartridge pens take me right back to my youth and I’ve got myself one as well – doesn’t make my writing neater though.

Otherwise, maths is going well, reading is good, but comprehension needs work. Again, nothing we didn’t know. We need to start reading again at home which means either he’s going to have to stop watching Police Interceptors for the whole episode, or will have to get a move on when showering and getting ready for bed.

School Disco

N’s school have their ‘Christmas disco’ in January.  N has never been before because he never wanted to, but this time decided to go. I think he enjoyed it, but seemed to play a lot of games rather than doing much dancing.  He didn’t say much about it other than it was ‘good’, which is what he says about most things.

Swimming

He’s back swimming again with school, having done his half term sitting out. It’s a relief he’s back doing it because he’ll be missing 3 Saturday lessons up til Easter, so needs to keep consistent inbetween those. They’ve been having a mix of instructors though, because his usual teacher has been off.

Childcare vouchers

Yay, school has started taking the childcare vouchers my company uses, so now I can catch up with all my unused ones that I don’t get to with after school club. It’ll only be morning club I use them for, but it’s good to know I’m getting the vouchers tax free to spend because it’s already come out of my salary. 

Drama

Let’s just say N is still not a fan of drama. He really dislikes the drama lessons and feels like he doesn’t get to take part in the sessions (although his teacher is keeping an eye on the lessons), and now there’s a new performance been put in early summer.  N’s class are being given the speaking roles to encourage them to take part after very few of them did at Christmas. I don’t think N dislikes being on stage, it’s more that rehearsals are dull when you’re waiting around for others and haven’t much to do yourself. So we’ll see what happens with that and whether he starts to enjoy it a bit more as they rehearse.

Now the scripts have come out for scene 1 and he’s not happy. He has 1 word, the least in the class so far. Some have several lines, and others have at least a sentence.  He’s told me he wants to be ill on the day of the play because it’s pointless him being in it. I tried to point out that he might have more to say in the next scene, that it’s a bonus he won’t have lots of lines to learn, and that he’ll also being doing the group singing.

But, I can see his point. I wouldn’t want to take part either.  Maybe he’ll just have to ham up the one word he has to make the most of it. I did point out that once he’s at secondary school, he’ll no longer have to do drama performances (although he might be stuck doing a couple more years of lessons).

Music

On the other hand music is going well. They’re making their own music as part of a larger piece of work, and experimenting with all the instruments. I dread to think what it sounds like, but he thinks the lessons are great. He’s gutted the lessons are on hold for the next few months due to the teacher being out of action.

Class assembly

N’s class topic this term is Predators. He’s quite enjoying this one although he probably wasn’t expecting to be researching the Honey Badger. They’ve been doing artwork, and evidently his zebra pattern was shown as a demo to the class. It’s even inspired him to be drawing giraffe patterns at home.  He rarely does anything drawing wise so I’m quite impressed he’s been inspired by art at school and I was impressed by his artwork that was held up in assembly.

They all did a few sentences of facts about an animal, habitat or characteristics in the assembly. N’s group was the last one and he did sundews, a carnivorous plant species. I could hear what he was reading, although he said his group didn’t have much practice time. It was really interesting to hear them all, and he seemed to enjoy it.

What’s been going on education wise with your children?