Tuesday 17 September 2013

First days at primary school

Like children up and down the country, our daughter started primary school last week. So far she has loved the experience and is bubbling with excitement each morning to get dressed and get going. She knew all of the other children in her class from pre-school and play-dates, and had been regularly visiting the school as part of pre-school activities, so the transition was as smooth as it could be.


Letting go of Mummy

We are now well in to the second week and I'm taking some time to reflect on where we are and what we still need to work on. Although she appears to love school, my daughter is reluctant to go in to the classroom without me, and sometimes clings on to my clothes to try and take me in with her. I've tried rationalising with her, bribing her, threatening her, comforting her and walking away from her. Although some of these strategies have enabled her to get in to school for that day's education, none offers a happy or lasting solution. 

At the moment my plan is to take her inside the classroom every morning to help her unpack her bag and hang it on the peg. After doing that the children are expected to go back into the playground until the bell rings. At this point they need to leave their mummies and go in for their lessons. My deal with her is that I'll go inside with her for the unpacking and then when the bell rings she needs to go in without me. This morning she made it near the door and then waited for the teacher to gently push her in.

I've been lucky enough that my husband is around during the day so I've asked him to take some time from work to look after our 2 younger ones this week to enable me to focus some attention on our daughter. Hopefully after some focus this week then from next week I can be a bit tougher about letting her go in with her friends but without me.


Dealing with homework

The other issue is that she now brings home daily homework. There are books to read and discuss as well as words to practice. For the first couple of days she was very keen to do this as soon as she arrived home, but now we have settled into a pattern of reading the stories before bed. Our daughter is very happy about this as she is getting much better one-to-one time with Mummy. Once her two younger brothers are in bed, she snuggles up with me to read her story of the day and practice reading the words she has been given. I have been making an effort to set aside this time rather than try and rush her to bed and get on with all of my own tasks. 

Hopefully the initial enthusiasm from parents and child won't diminish too much! Let me know your trials and victories with the new school term. Thanks for reading :-)

Friday 6 September 2013

Scrap-booking

We're moving house. In three weeks time. One of my many distraction techniques from the reality of packing and cleaning has been to start a scrapbook project with the children. I bought 3 notebooks and have dug out all of the cards, wedding invitations and personal notes which I don't want to throw away. My eldest two children and I have been merrily cutting, gluing and sticking. This is a great rainy day activity!




Tuesday 3 September 2013

Mummy & daughter day

My eldest child is starting primary school next week, and so we are finally here at the last week of our summer holidays. I have three children and they are fairly close in age with my middle one aged 2 years and the youngest 10 months. Since the baby was born my daughter hasn't spent much time just with mummy, even though we have all had so many happy family times together. I've written elsewhere in the blog about how her behaviour has been getting more challenging throughout the summer holidays. So, I decided to give her some one to one attention and take her out for the afternoon whilst my husband looked after the other two.


She was so excited when I first mentioned the idea, that she looked ready to burst! Our plan was a fairly simple one: take the 10 minute train ride to the nearest city of Exeter and have a wander round the shops followed by coffee for me and cake for her.

We spent a lovely few hours together doing not very much, but with me trying hard to listen to her and chat with her rather than constantly be distracted by other children / work / housework. Her comment on the way home was "we didn't have time for much fun today did we because we had to do all that shopping!" So I guess there really is no pleasing some people :-)