Archives: crossley heath

Crikey – I had a day off work, Louise & I went shopping & al was well! We had a pleasant time & Louise got a few most definitely required things that she needed & although we forgot to do one or 2 other bits & bobs, the day went to plan.

It was good.

We were happy.

And getting home, the kids were all right – they were playing outside… & well… that’s good as well.

Jack’s been a little harder to pin down on his homework again (after having been subjected to a ‘talk’ on it the other day he’s still resiliently resistant…) And we have the problem of ‘don’t blame him’. I mean – I’m one to talk – I know I disliked the intrusion of homework but then I was very lucky, in that I was managed to avoid the task of doing said (through luck & ‘changing schools’ – nothing of my design). I disliked academic things in general though – I was not a good student. Louise was more diligent & …well… academic; I mean – she has a Masters Degree & I failed to obtain my HND – I think that speaks volumes. But even she concedes that she left things to the last minute (at 5 o’clock in the morning after being out the night before was possibly an admission too far (to Jack) I thought).

Well – it’s parent’s evening, this evening, at Jack’s school… All in all this should be interesting. I guess that we should be on our ‘best behaviour’ & all that… Okay – Louise is fine, it’s just me that has to try to do a little thinking before opening his big fat gob.

So then – how do Eve & Jude’s teachers perceive that they are dong at school?

Well, Eve’s teacher: she likes Eve; confident, able considerate & all that sort of thing; lovely girl, “Another bright one there”. Louise brought up her lack of confidence at the moment & teacher was a little surprised. Two edged… Eve is uncountably seems more confident at school, so it’s not odd that she’s a little surprised by this. She’s also the same teacher that didn’t spot Jack’s confidence crumble while he was in her class… So… we either are worrying unduly or not worrying unduly… but it’s too early to tell. Eve may just have had a couple of ‘off’ weeks, or as is more usual has different responses to different situations. She has quite noble ethics, does Eve & the hurly burly of our family life does take it’s toll on her sense of justice now & then (thus the ‘not fair’ weekend when there was little that could be declared unfair).

So then Jude… Jude is with a teacher Jack just didn’t get one with… for one reason or another. Jude seems to get on with her fine though, so this is good. She says that Jude is a bit of a dark horse. He (like Eve) is in the ‘top ability’ group & he can do anything that she gives him. He also seems to be canny enough not to do too much; it seems he can pace himself so that although he gets everything done, he doesn’t do it too quickly & thus be given extra to do. She doesn’t seem to indicate that he’s not pushing himself, it sounds like she’s indicating that he’s figured how to ‘work the system’ that she operates; ‘dark horse’, indeed. Jude does have ’11+ type’ books at home for maths & verbal reasoning & Louise does set these & he does enjoy dong them. He’s not by any means scared of school work. I was being jumped on by Esme yesterday evening (Esme did a lot of jumping on me yesterday) & he asked if he could read me his reading book. He ended up reading it to Louise, but it was pleasant to have been offered.

Jack had a homework overload a little bit again last night. Bad day at school was foolish enough to try to catch a bus up the road to catch the school bus, but caught the wrong bus leaving him having to dash back to where he wants to catch the school bus. The school bus could be more… civilised. Being ‘Year 7’ (youngest in the school) they are lower in the packing order & therefore find it harder to get seats on the bus. Therefore Leila, Cleo Thomas & he have been travelling further up the bus run to catch the bus where seats are less sparse. Jack is presently walking quite a way to catch the bus at an early stop at the moment. So yesterday as he has a bus pass he tried catching a bus to get further ‘ahead’ & failed miserably because he didn’t think things through properly. He’s been chastised at home for even trying because he does run the risk of missing the bus altogether if he keeps takes this approach. Next bungle involved rushing from Food Tech without first ensuring his bag was well done up & his school bags spilling into a muddy puddle. He has some seriously damp books & he was not allowed to go out of German to go back & retrieve a couple of books he (somehow) missed – including his German, which (…hmm – this all sounds so less likely as I type) included his German book which meant that he could not hand in the German homework that he was supposed to have done. Hmm… anyway – he did get a merit in German because he only got one wrong in his spelling & that was because he wrote ‘s’ rather than ‘z’. Homework next lesson. Jack seems to miss noting down all the homework he’s has due sometimes. Stressful day for him though.

I wonder why he was up in the night & left the hall light on & left a chair from his room in the middle of the hall? The lights on is nothing new – he does that when he get up to go to the toilet – it’s just part of who he is that he doesn’t manage to turn the lights off, but the chair was odd.

Low key weekend… he kids played & we got the shopping… or did we play & the kids get the shopping? When did Louise & I last get to ‘play’? That’s silly. The kids did go shopping though – both on Saturday & Sunday Jack, Eve & Jude set out to to Morrisons on their bikes. On Saturday I cramped their style & turned up as well (as they only had a portion of the shopping to do. Caught up with them (on my bike) just as they got to the shop, so they couldn’t nip into the cafe to get themselves some toast. On the Sunday they tried to get toast, but they were refused by the very fickle staff there as they were supposed to be 15 or over to be able to have toast. Not that I haven’t seen younger kids being served there – they’re just fickle. Things went a little wrong then because they’d already done their shopping & thus headed back. Stopped off at Heals to get some drinks & Eve was supposed to stay outside (as Jude had the day before when they stopped by the newsagents) to look after the bikes, but Eve though this grossly unfair & said that they would get her the wrong kind of drink, had huff & headed home on her own (they are supposed to stick together). Jack mutters that he probably won’t take Eve again, but it’s been more her general attitude this weekend. Very ‘half empty glass’ & apt to shout about things being unfair (when they aren’t really) & that we don’t understand (possibly all too well) & generally being rude & wailing. We put iyt partially down to being tired still from being so late to bed on Friday….

Friday we went to the Parents Evening up at school. It was not so much a .. hmmm – well – I knew it wasn’t a parent’s evening like ‘meeting the teacher to see how your child is doing’ but more an ‘open evening’ affair. I’m not sure what I envisaged, but parents got to sit at large tables & even buy a beer or wine while the kids went off to one of the halls to be entertained by some sixth formers. We were given a similar lesson to one Jack will have had toward the beginning of term in his ‘learning to learn’ lessons. A little self assessing quiz to see what type of learning strategy would work best for us? I turn out quite high on kinaesthetic; which I guess kind of figures. I discussed with Louise that she would be higher on the aural/verbal learning were some of the questions not skewed to assume you had huge self confidence, but both Jack & Louise scored highest on … oh the ones about being able to take stuff in just reading it. Discussion on all these types of learning & it was interesting enough to stop me doodling & sketching – so that was something. It was also supposed to be an evening where we could socialise with other parents, but .. well we didn’t – we stuck to our table & didn’t attempt to try. We enjoyed it though. Got a brief chat with Jack’s teacher so she can put adults to the child. All went as well as we could have wanted. Must have just missed a bus home because we had to wait a while & Jack & Eve got bored. Eve looked the part – she had her new blouse on, her calotts, her glasses & her hair in bunches. She brought along her colouring books in a small shoulder bag that also added to making a good impression. Jack’s teacher had noticed her. Eve enjoyed herself & likes the school a lot. We need to try to capitalise on this & try to get her to apply herself instead of digging her heels in & telling herself something is hard when she just need to calm down, look at something & get on with things evenly.

Jack’s
1st term year 7 timetable

 

	P 1	B	P 2	P 3	L	P 4	P 5
Monday	DT		Maths	German		Geography	Art
Tuesday	Science		Maths	Music		English	science
Wednesday	English		History	I.T.C		German	Free
Thursday	French		P.E	English		l to l	Games
Friday	Maths		French	Science		Geography	R.E

 

Times

P 1 9.00 10.00

B 10.00 10.15

P 2 10.15 11.15

P 3 11.20 12.20

L 12.20 1.15

P 4 1.20 2.20

P 5 2.25 3.25

 

Key

P = period

B = break

L = lunch

l to l = learn to learn

Free = end of school

doodle from my pad at work, again:

And a little summary – I’ve been a little under the weather this week (& there’s been some weather to be under) – head cold & bad chest: pretty boring, & make me even duller edged than usual.

Jack has coped well with his first week at school – he’s been doing French & German (seems quite taken with French).  We popped out to Manchester today as he needed to get german & French dictionaries for school; just Jack Esme & myself.

It seems a while since I was on what I consider to be my ‘normal train’ . Perhaps things have been more lax than I was leading myself to believe? I have a head cold – that probably assists in promoting this disjointed feeling I have this morning.

Despite better efforts I was not especially earlier to bed, but I did fall asleep somewhat after reading to Eve, so that might have helped (amount of sleep) & not helped (took a while to actually get to sleep properly when went to bed).

Perhaps I think about sleep too much? I think Jack went to sleep OK – he did get up in the night to go to the toilet (which woke me up: the ‘thump’ as he hops out of his tall bed) but when I popped down to turn the bathroom light off (he left it on) I checked in on him & he was jolly sleepy – so I think he’d actually woken up to go to the toilet. It would seem his body still has bad habits even if he’s trying to sleep better now.

So what was his first day at school like? It’s difficult to get any really deep impression out of him, but he’s most definitely happy. It was outside PE (& they should have had their outside kit (yet to be delivered by the school) so when he said that they should have had their other kit Louise & I were worried that we had made a mistake, but it seems that everyone else had made the same mistake; Jack said everyone was wearing their indoor whites outside, In a tremendously heavy shower from which they may have had to retreat. All his kit was damp in his bag; we’d not thought to supply a plastic bag for these events. I’m not sure now what lessons he’s actually done, but it might not be the case that at this early stage there hasn’t been too much in that way. All he’s had to do in the way of ‘homework’ is to copy his timetable into his log book; nothing too arduous to start with.

After all this I didn’t really get info from Jude & Eve as to what their new classes were like. Jude is with a teacher that Jack didn’t get along with, so we’re needing to keep an eye on that one & Eve s with a teacher that Jack really got on with, but then had a really bad year with his classmates… So again, it may be a case of keeping an eye on Eve, because there area lot of (shall we say) ‘competitive’ girls in her class; not necessarily academically competitive.

Esme has Lilly (from across the road) in playgroup with her now, so she likes that. They were making a noise & fuss upstairs on their own yesterday when I got home, so I went quietly up too see what nonsense they might be getting up to & they had set themselves out with a play picnic & were ‘reading’ Pingu books to each other. I slipped quietly away again – that’s the sort of play to encourage, not disturb.

Later setting out to work this morning, because I’ve seen Jack to the bus stop. I was going to see him onto the bus, but as there are 3 others he knows there it seemed a little gooseberry for me to hang about bringing to tone down , so I’ve scarpered to get my train. He’s probably travelling by now… on his was to his new school. Crikey!

I’m sure he’ll do fine.

It’s not been so bad all this getting ready. Louise’s most stressful point was ironing on the school badge to the blazer – think she was just so worried about getting it wrong. The badge was also to big for the blazer pocket & therefore overlaps the bottom of the pocket a bit… I was quite pleased to see that Thomas had the same arrangement on his blazer, so I mentioned that to Louise (quick call to say alls OK)..

It was quite nice to see all the kids this morning as well – we set off (Jack & I) with everyone waving at Jack down the backstreet. Naturally Esme wanted to come, but she made less fuss (in the end) than I thought she would. She wanted to go to school as well, & ‘m not sure what she’s made of Jack going off at a different time. I wonder if she’s expecting to see him at National when she goes to playgroup this afternoon?

Eve is now the oldest Schroeder at the school.

She was trying a little math work the other day & was finding it a little hard. She didn’t like it not being easier & complained about it (badly) Hm – when I say badly, I mean that she didn’t complain well; it was more like it was unfair than than it was something to be resolved & she’ll need to work on that approach to things if she’s to get a grip on it all… we’ll see – it might just take a little more maturity…