Schooling Central

My little man will start grade 1(second year of primary school) tomorrow morning I think he has pretty mixed feelings about the whole thing. He likes school, but he loves his free time, and school does tend to intrude on this a bit. I think he will be excited to see his friends though, and I'm guessing he will be up early in the morning!

Annabel.

Hey annabel over here in the west, we start school on the 4th of feb, so not til next monday. Hayden is so ready to go back, he has been getting very grumpy of late, must be so boring for them after so many weeks holidays. Im looking forward to some structure and a routine as well.

Well he said he didn't want to go a couple of times last night and this morning, but as soon as I put the uniform on in he gave me a big smile and said "mummy I am excited about going to school today"

He is in a 1/2 class, and some of the grade 2 boys are giants! The class is mostly boys too -just 5 girls I think. I'm looking forward to this afternoon when he can tell us all about his day.

Bel I think it's fair enough that kids get an extra week of holidays, not that I was complaining this morning though

Annabel.

Hi Annabel,
grade 1 is a big step, you arent the babies of the school anymore, the preppies look on the grade 1's as the big kids, your son should have a great day,
My daughter started grade 4 today she loves her teacher so she was so excited to be going back to school, but her best friend has been put in a different class
Last year Melissa was pertrified, it was like starting prep again, her school is set on 2 campuses, and in grade 3 you go to the senior campus, so she was the baby of the school again.
Kim

My son went back today (grade 4), my daughter starts tomorrow (grade Prep) and my eldest starts on Friday (year 7)! Busy week.

My eldest started year 1 today too, he was so excited to be going back and is stocked that he has different friends in his class than last year and that there are kids younger than him there

Well he came out of the class room and straight away said "I had a good day" He was especially impressed with his teacher's reward program -the best behaved child in the class each day gets a sticker and then gets to sit on the bean-bag the following day. He explained that he would like the bean-bag reward even more than the sticker. Bean-bags at school are cool

The day must have taken a lot out of him though, because he had a very short fuse all afternoon, and starting sobbing when we went the the video shop and found out it was closing down Luckily dh was here and we managed to get him through the afternoon without any major meltdowns. I expect he will be like this for the first couple of weeks (I used to dread pick-up for the first term of Prep), but once he has settled in things should be fine.

How did others go today?

Annabel.

My eldest started Y3 on Tuesday and was so excited to be back with his friends By Wednesday morning the rot had set in and he was whinging about everything...!!
DS no.2 has his last term at Kindy before starting school in T2. Loved it there last year but arrived and his "idol" a male teacher had been dumped by the director for one of her friends . We are all a tad disappointed now for the boys especially as they have loved having a male role model about. DS used to mimick the way he dressed Now they have 2 50+ female teachers . Oh well, only for a term...
DD is gonna love having me to herself soon!!

Melissa had a great couple of days, she is now in grade 4, she thinks her teacher is fantastic, her only hitch is that she had to sit next to boys , she has already bought home homework, a project, which is due in next week , maths sheets and a problem solver, (my god that was hard- even i had to get help to help her to do it) , I think her teacher will be a stickler for homework , she has spent at least 2 hours each night doing her work .
Kim

Wow Kim, that's a lot of homework for the first week of school

I have the opposite frustration -formal lessons start off so slowly at the beginning of the year, I really wish they would just get into some real work. They didn't do much for the last few weeks of last year, and I don't think they're going to do much for the first few weeks of this year. Ds doesn't particularly enjoy the busy work and could do with a bit of a challenge.

Annabel.