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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To return the class bear with a note saying thanks, but no thanks

248 replies

Wailywailywaily · 08/02/2015 16:15

DS has the Reception class Bear to entertain this weekend. The bear has two books full of his previous adventures and TBH he has a busy life.

I'm ashamed to say that he has now spent the entire weekend in his suitcase .

DS gets a lot of homework for a reception child IMO - spellings, drawing and reading - and I can't be bothered to make him come up with an adventure for the Bear as well.

So I was thinking that the Bear seems to need a rest anyway and perhaps it would be just fine to send him back having had a good long snooze?

OP posts:

Thread gallery

Leeds2 · 11/02/2015 22:43

That sounds lovely, Cheshire.

appreciate I may be in a minority -

messalina · 11/02/2015 23:02

We took a Before and After picture of the bear with a full and empty wine glass at a wedding. Then kept on forgetting to get DD to write up sodding diary entry as was too busy and kept Bear and Diary for several weeks until she took him to bed one night, slept on his leg and broke it off.

BeaLola · 12/02/2015 00:35

We had the bear in reception . It had been everywhere before our turn eg chessington, skiing, rally. Luckily it was Father's Day weekend so it went with us to visits my Dad and there is a picture of him having lunch with bear, it made popcorn with my son before we watched a film and then it had a much needed snooze. Year 1 and Year 2 bears have been and we have had Beaver bear (who smells) despite beng washed ! We had him for a week and I decided it was DH turn to make sure pics took and events recorded. On a week's stay we have one drawn picture by DS and three lines of writing which end with the statement "whilst we boys watched TV Mummy snored ". Not quite forgiven DH yet especially as I was not snoring hut tackling huge ironing pile !

sparkysparkysparky · 12/02/2015 10:53

Re freezing, I try and give it at least an overnight. 24 hours probably best. Some cuddly toys have a trip to the Arctic while Dd is at school. Which reminds me ...

CharityD · 12/02/2015 11:08

I love class bear threads!

One of my nieces has the class bear every so often, I don't know if they have to write up stuff though, or just mind it. I think it often ends up going into the washing machine on arrival.

tootsietoo · 12/02/2015 11:22

YANBU! Hate the damn thing, it's just homework for parents. Fine, if the children WANT to take it around with them for the weekend and then draw some pictures and write as best they can some words about what they did. But the full on typed essays with a load of pictures all beautifully printed out with little evidence that the child got involved in producing the essay - that just feels a teeny bit competitive to me.

edmontonkitty · 12/02/2015 12:50

Surely it would have taken about as much time to write in the book as it took to start this post? What's the big deal?

Binkybix · 12/02/2015 13:58

You could say it got poorly and died. No bear can escape time.

MrsHathaway · 12/02/2015 14:25

We have the nursery orangutan (?) for half term. DS(3) is hugely attached to him.

Every fucking night we have to undress him and put him in pyjamas, and every cunting morning the same in reverse.

The bar has been set very low - the instructions on the outside of the book say he likes hugs and going to the park, and he seems to visit lots of grandmas - so he will be having glamorous trips to IKEA and the camping shop. Possibly the zoo if it isn't too cold and I can be arsed to make a picnic there's a suitable day.

Though I'm tempted now to try for several MN references - bag of Pom Bears, Center Parcs catalogue, elderly Korean lady?

CountingThePennies · 12/02/2015 16:49

Dd whos just turned 2 has brought home the nursery dog.

Its an ugly looking thing with no stuffing in the neck so its head flops about.
Tbh im embarrassed to take it anywhere.

However dd is not interested in it, so unfortunately it appears to be homework for me which has annoyed me.

Its due back tomorrow and i ve tried to print some pictures of it at home but the computer is not playing ball.

I ve written a simply write up in the book and next time dd gets it i will hand it back with a simply thanks but no thanks!

bluelamp · 12/02/2015 18:23

Freezing the bear will not kill the bugs, they will still be there when you defrost the bear. Washing on the other hand will get rid of most of them, especially if you use soap.

Agree with PPs who say do as normal a day as possible, I'd say the real brownie points are for the child writing in the diary themselves, not for those who have a holiday abroad. DD2 was so proud at the beginning of year 1 when she wrote the diary entry herself (first in the year to do it) and got a round of applause from the entire class for doing it all by herself.

Didn't think about people not having printers, we have a colour printer at home so it's not much effort to print out a photo, and that appears to be true for most of the DC's classmates.

Kaekae · 12/02/2015 18:36

Homework for parents, I am the one writing about the damn bear, I am the one who prints out the pictures and I am the one who realises at 1am in the morning I haven't done all of the above! And don't you just hate it when they try to put the smelly bear in your bed or on the kitchen table/worktop! Yuck.

ElphabaTheGreen · 12/02/2015 21:23

We've got The Fucking Bear this weekend. This is him - he's called George. DS1 is 2, FFS, so I don't know what the hell he's supposed to be able to contribute to the whole exercise.

All I could think of to amuse myself was a tableaux of shots of George living a life of depravity among drug dealers and lady-bears of the night, when suddenly Spaceman DS1 (cunning working-in to the plot of one of his dress-ups) appears to him in a smack-induced delirium and makes him see the error of his ways. Then they go to the Peppa Pig movie to celebrate.

I think all I'm going to manage is the Peppa Pig movie bit

To return the class bear with a note saying thanks, but no thanks

rosabud · 12/02/2015 23:34

My DC all too old for class bear now but enjoyed reading the thread. My favourite was the one where bear's leg fell off. The whole thing has reminded me of Cubs hamster which, on account of having 2 cubs, we had to have two weeks running. The best thing about Cubs hamster was his name: Fang.

ladygoingGaga · 12/02/2015 23:48

I am with the OP on this one, sodding class mascots. We don't even get a cuddly toy, ours is a rabbit, a bloody garden ornament in a plastic pet carrier on a bed or shredded paper, seriously WTF?
I had a rant, to other mums at school, but did indeed had to 'suck it up' for sake of DS.
YANBU

MrsHathaway · 13/02/2015 07:27

Yes, I've previously had a rant here about school's assumption that everyone has a colour printer at home. Indeed, that everyone has internet access at home.

I mean, we do, and many people do, but the assumption gets on my nerves. We only bought ours for the fucking homework having managed with b&w for a decade for our own needs.

Hotbot · 13/02/2015 08:09

We had the class bear, went to a friends for family tea , he came along we forgot him, maybe we had too much wine , friends texted us piccies of said bear smoking tabs and leaning against a can of lager ......classy
We didn't send those in , but I do fear that life was never rather same for him .

mummytippy · 13/02/2015 09:18

My son's nursery school had 'holiday bear' who was a mini Paddington with suitcase and all. The nursery had a wall with pics of him with all the children who'd taken him on adventures and he had a little passport at the nursery.

I thought it was a lovely idea and he'd been as far as Australia with one child (never mind darkest Peru!).

It's all about the children and the magic of their imagination and how they perceive the bear whether full of bugs or not.
You have to put yourself in the place of your child.
My son loved showing holiday bear around when ever we took him away.

Come on... Get into the spirit of things, children only have one childhood and these things give us as parents a window of opportunity to go back there ourselves.

MrsHathaway · 13/02/2015 09:19

Hotbot you should totally have done a separate sheet to amuse the teacher.

OttiliaVonBCup · 13/02/2015 09:38

How did this turn into a bear cleaning competition/deprived school bunfight in 5 pages only?

I thought it would take as least 10.

OttiliaVonBCup · 13/02/2015 09:39

I must admit I'm one of those who loves writing a class bear diary, photos included.
The DCs had to wrestle it out of my hands.

Hotbot · 13/02/2015 10:04

Yes, mrs Hathaway I think dcs teacher at the time would have enjoyed it.

MrsHathaway · 13/02/2015 10:38

I'm tempted to have one bit in the real book where it says " stayed up late!" with a photo of him lying on the sofa with a bottle of Jim Beam.

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