We've had a week away in Tenby, which I wrote about in my post Dear Diary, and a few days up by the seaside visiting my parents (watch out for the photo update on that coming soon!). We've also had several friends over to play and enjoyed some brief trips out locally. I've really appreciated spending so much time with the girls, and of course I'm not going to pretend it's all been easy but I am sad that these times are coming to an end. It's not felt like a long seven weeks, it has actually flown by. That is a definite sign of good times.
Sasha and her classmates were all asked to send a postcard back to their new teacher at the Junior School over the summer holidays, presumably so they could talk in class about the different places that have been visited, or activities taken part in.
I chose to buy ours at the end of the holidays, so we might have a few different points to mention on it. Sasha refused to write on it herself, but was happy to dictate to me what she wanted writing on it. I made suggestions along the lines of where we had been, making sandcastles on the beach, swimming, bouncy trampolines etc, but Sasha was adamant she did not want any of that on her postcard.
She insisted (started to get upset when I tried to avoid it) that I write the following:
"Dear Mrs. X, I'll always be quiet at school and when you need me to do some work I'll try my best".
This is not the first time she's said something like this - right from the start of the holidays she has been informing us that she will be good, and behave like a big girl when she starts Junior School. She has mentioned the 'being quiet' bit particularly; it would seem she has become aware of how important not being noisy is. However I'm not sure this is her biggest issue at school; my understanding is that she withdraws to the back of the class and does her own thing, rather than making noise and disrupting others herself. She has told me in the past that it's the other children who do the 'chitter-chattering' - and I have often wondered if she tells them off for that!
We have discussed how it will be important for her to do the work at Junior School; up until now, at Infants, she has mostly resisted taking part and producing any 'work' as such, unless it was a craft session. Her refusal to write is driven by a fear of not getting it right, and looking back over her records I can see that whilst she wrote a sentence by herself at the start of Year 1, there has been little written since then. As the amount of formal work steps up at Junior School, it will be interesting to see if she can respond to this. She will obviously need some considerable help, it's not going to 'just' happen.
So the Back To School Nerves..... are mostly mine. And pretty much every other mum's with children starting at our Junior or Infant schools tomorrow I suspect. The children? Ah, I'm sure they'll be fine.
