To hate take home Ted

[MadamMMA]

Arggh I DONT want him none of our printers work and apparently a hand drawn picture of DS and THT just won’t cut it

Ahhhh this has made me laugh! My class had a take home ted. You may find it annoying as the parent and it can become competitive although it shouldn't.... but as a teacher it is lovely to see the children (particularly shy ones) chatting about what they've done when they had the teddy and to see their pride and excitement!

We ask if anyone has any exciting days out or trips they want to take ted on but otherwise he is sent home randomly so everyone gets a turn and it doesn't matter if teddy goes to the park or plays in the garden, bakes cakes, does colouring etc it's just a good talking point for the children and hand drawn pictures are fine they don't have to be printed!

We also have two identical teds so when he returns from his visit he is washed and the other ted goes to the next child lol!

We had John The (fucking) Giraffe. John had previously enjoyed horse riding, a trip to the Lakes, amongst other delights.

At our house he got to sit on a skateboard.

I’d like to sit on a skateboard 😁 you’ve all made me feel better and I’m going to persuade Ds that drawn pictures are even better than photos take home snake and gnome made me laugh! 😂

We got it once over the Xmas holidays only ds forgot to tell me, poor ted spent the whole of Xmas in the boot of the car,I had to pretend the ted had, Xmas dinner with us and had a visit from santa etc,ds2 got him once ,he has autism and learning, Ted spent the evening being ignored on the windowsill, ds 2 could not have been less interested .

One of the mums in ds class took Ted shopping for a whole new outfit at build a bear and a new suitcase! On our turn he suffered a v hot boil wash after ds took him for a sleepover and wet the bed!

These wretched items are not unique to the UK.

We lived in the Netherlands and DCs attended the local school. So the adventures of Sodding Pepper had to be written in Dutch. My Dutch was slecht so the adventures would be written in English pushed though Babel Fish and proof read by elder DD who would correct my archaic phraseology

Ours was a build a bear with several changes of clothes and stupid bloody patent heeled shoes that kept falling off. I was so paranoid all weekend of losing bits of the outfit.

Aw, I remember this Poor ted got to go to Ballet or Football on a Saturday, and usually the park or visiting relatives on a sunday.

Oh I hated Tedi Twt (as he was called here in South Wales), or TBT as he was unaffectionately known (Tedi Bloody Twt, if you’re wondering).

It was a Friday to a Monday thing, which seemed such a rush considering they wouldn’t give him out until the Friday, so we would have to desperately contrive some adventures on a Sunday evening. I’m sorry to say that much of what we wrote was just plain and simple untrue.

God I hate THT, our school has 3 of them, one of which is 3 feet tall, I kid you not! Nursery has one as do both Rainbows and Brownies...we've had all of the bastarding things!

Haha yes! I remember this with DS and 4 years later DD will be doing it soon and it’s the same bear 🤢

It came home with a notebook of all the things the bear had done. All the fab days out it’s had with other children and ours barely managed s trip to the park. (DS has autism and we had major problems with going out and about at the time) so literally the bear just ate marmite on toast and watched toy story and had a bath 🤣

Do they still bring home the class gerbil? The long holiday was the worst time to have it.

Dd stamped her name all over play schools teds' book. Staff not happy

Ds1 had the THT when he went to play at someone else's house so the poor mum had to take pictures of my ds and hers with the Ted and send them to me and even made sure ds wrote in the book.
I owe her a huge favour!
We used to just get it overnight - how you can do anything and print photos overnight is impossible especially if you use after school club etc. Not sure having the Ted over a weekend is any better?

I refused to have a take home Ted for my class. One of the mothers who spoke English as a first language and was literate asked why not. All of the families who didn’t and weren’t were very happy with my class being a take home Ted free zone.
I did small listening and speaking groups, so I would have needed about 5 of the buggers if I was any way inclined to torture my families.

Wtf?! DD is 2.5, no one told me about this!!

Surely they should warn you about shit like this at ante natal classes or something?!

Are there any teachers around who can explain what these take home toys are supposed to achieve?

They seem like pointless make work to me. I’ve never had the nursery ones home (it’s a sign up list not a rota) and thankfully school doesn’t do it.

DS LOVED having the class bear! He was almost exploding with excitement when I collected him from Nursery that day! He was the first in the class to get the bear, so I messaged the WhatsApp group and said "Apparently there's a class bear... will we all agree to keep his adventures low-key?". Thankfully the parents are mostly nice, so were happy with that.

Spencer came to us and went to Tesco and church; that seemed to be exciting enough! Thankfully we were allowed to email the photos in. Also the bear was regularly washed, and Nursery had a spare.

When DS took him back, he had to tell everyone what Spencer had done. DS is quite shy, but really shone at speaking in front of everyone.

DD (2) also loves the bear, and squeals with delight when she sees him going to or from Nursery!

When we had Ted my dd was massively into Boy George (fascinated by the plaits and make up more than his music) so Ted had the full BG treatment during his stay....clip in plaits, hat, scarves....just managed to save him from full make up....didn't think the teacher would appreciate that!! He then gave his own private concert for us with microphone and disco ball!!

We lost the little fecker with dd2. God the shame. Replaced it with one of 190 spare ones in her room but it was mentioned for years.
I also covered the family in permanent embarrassment. Ever laughed in a school assembler hall full of parents and you are the only one? That was me when Mrs Sparkly Head teacher told us that Mrs Earnest Deputy Head had taken the School Bear (much fought over and could only go on hols with you if you were going somewhere impressive) to a Sydney, Australia. Unfortunately whilst posing said bear to get a picture in front of Opera House, she had stepped back and fallen down steps and broken her leg.
I know NOW that this is not funny. But it seemed like karma in the moment

DDs reception class had a pelican. By sheer good luck we were visiting her grandparents in Gloucestershire that weekend and were able to take him to see his cousins at Birdland. Over 15 years ago and I still feel quite smug about that.

Oh how I hate it when DD brings the doll home from Rainbows! Never mind taking it out, sometimes we can't even find where we've going it when it's time to take back!

"Olivia has spent the week somewhere on the car floor", we should write. With no accompanying picture.

• flung it, even!

Dd1 is autistic and very literal - we ended up with the blasted bear over half term and her idiot (but well meaning) teacher told her to make sure she wrote down everything teddy did. Dd1 filled in 10 pages with minute detail of everything Teddy did complete with photos and hand drawn pictures. We go out and about quite a bit to groups and things so we did do a lot but she started with getting up, having breakfast, getting dressed, the car route (complete with maps and what teddy could see out of the window) and so on. The bear disappeared after that dd1 insited on reading the whole thing to her teacher

Totally outing, but my dad bought home the class badger....a badger FFS! She told the teacher that it would like to come to work with me as badgers come out at night and I was working nights that weekend. So I dutifully took the badger to work with me (having washed it first!) Where it spent the night shift sat in the front of an ambulance whilst my colleague wondered if I was the one who needed help that night! We didn't have badger again after the antics of a Saturday night shift!