Anyone else finding the 'hands off' nature of Year 3 hard?

[Legacy]

DS1 has gone into Year 3 at a new school.

I know it's junior school, and that they begin to have to be more independent, but both he and I are finding the 'distance' that is placed between the school and the parents hard in these initial few days.

Parents aren't allowed into the school except in exceptional circumstances (and if signed in) and I have no sense of what his classroom looks like/ where he keeps his stuff/ how to find out things.

And he suddenly has so many places he needs to be on different days with different equipment etc, and I can't help him to know what to do!

He's not the best organised child on a good day, so I just wondered if, when your child went into Year 3, you found some way of managing the personal organisation side of things e.g. a pocket notebook/ daily calendar in school bag/ writing on hand etc.

e.g.today he had to

• take in 2 things for his teacher,
  
• 1 for the office,
  
• take football stuff for an away match,
  
• change his library books,
  
• check whether he's got a place in the sports team for tomorrow
  
• check when his guitar lesson is
  
• remember to pick up DS2 from after school club before coming out to meet me
  AND
  
• check lost property for his games shorts (lost on Day 3 )
  
  Something's going to go wrong somewhere

[zubb]

I would give him a notebook.
Not sure what you mean about the 'distance' as we don't go in with children from reception up, and we have to sign in when we do go in so I'm used to that. I have been in to look at the yr1 classroom that Ds1 has just gone into - I just asked the teacher and went at the end of the day - could you do that at all?

[mankyscotslass]

We have been encouraged to be hands off since the second term in reception. We can offer to go in and hear reading, or make a time to go in and have a look. Even in Reception we had to leave the children to go in on their own to class. We watched them line up and in they went. Now in YR1 it is a scrum btwn the yr1 and yr2 to get in the doors. He had a load of forms to be returned to school on Monday, had to leave him to it. I was very worried but so far so good. Agree with Zubb, if you think he is likely to forget or get mixed up, maybe a notabook is an idea

[pigsinmud]

Go with notebook idea. Ds2 is in yr 3 - however goes to a village school (up to end of yr 3). We are encouraged to go into their classroom every morning to hear them read. It was a real shock last year when ds1 moved on to primary school in local town - no-one goes into classrooms and I found it really cold. I understand what you mean about "distance". I know it's easy for parents to wander around the village school as there are only about 60 children and everyone knows everyone else.

My ds1 has just started yr 5 a nd he's still struggling with remebering to hand forms in! Actually this year ds1's year have all been given a planner, so should make it easier for him to remember. Hope it gets better for him.

[Legacy]

Yes, it's a private prep school.

I was thinking about this again after I posted and thought "no, I really ought to know a bit more than this..." so phoned the school, and it seems quite a few parents have expressed the same feeling, so they are arranging an after school session for us all to see the classroom/ ask questions etc etc.

His last school was a very 'open door' (but safely so!) type of school, with lots of parent help and input, so i guess that's why this feels so different.

[LIZS]

Does he have a school diary/communication book ? At Year 3 ds was still reminded about things by the teachers, assuming they knew via the book if needs be. We could still drop in after school and each term had a drop in morning to view work etc. in practice it wasn't as strict as first appeared.

ds is now Year 5 and we are very much hands off but he has a much more detailed diary and yesterday we went through it to put the prompts in for extra curricular activities, music lesson and so on . He now has to check the team lists himself (not that it is likely to be an issue !) and will hopefully soon learn how to note things in the right place and remember to look at them ! dd is more of a trial ebcasue she is younegr and more likely to forget the various bags of kit.