To be fed up with Barnaby the Sodding Bear aka Mum's Homework!!!!!!!!

[MilaMae]

So dtwins were in rec last year and they bought said bear home 3 Xs each if I remember correctly. So that's 6 nights of trying to give Barnaby a good time in order for him to have a vaguely interesting diary.

Accompanying 3 grumpy kids home,watching them stuff cookies whilst watching Oggy and the Cockroaches does not an interesting diary make.

Having to take,download photos and extract something drawn/written out of a 5 year old boy to liven up Barnaby's diary after a day at school is no mean feat.

The one time we had Barnaby for the weekend and were actually doing something interesting (train,boat and double decker in London along with a trip to Tate Modern) we forgot him!!!! Dp was gutted as he wanted a pic of Barnaby floating down the Thames.

Anyhow 2nd week of term and guess who gets the 1st go with Barnaby's older brother Barnaby the bear who hangs out in Y1 yes that's right dtwin1. I was the mother getting all the sympathetic glances whose heart sank as her son came racing out with an extra rucksack.

So last night I was up until midnight trying to download photos of Barnaby errrr eating cookies and watching Oggy again This was after an evening of dtwin 2 winging because he hadn't got Barnaby and all 3 dc fighting over him. Anyhow I get up in the morning only to find dp has already written Barnaby's diary and there is no way it can be sent to school if you get my drift,it may have been funny 9 o'clock last night but at 8 o'clock this morning I was not best pleased. So I quickly re-write it and manage to get a picture out of dtwin1 only to find he's now bonded with Barnaby and is in floods of tears as he doesn't want him to go back. Manage to gently prize him off it in order to ram him back in his rucksack. Get to school(dtwin1 has gone from sobbing to quiet sniffing by this time),then foolishly warn the teacher that handover might be tricky only for her to reassure dtwin that she'll make sure he has him back soon noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The best bit is dd has just started rec this year so by my calculation we'll be having Barnaby and co 9 times this year-yay!!!!

Hacked off with frigging Barnaby? I hope he took pictures of THAT and put them in the diary!

I have never heard of this (my two hulking teenagers never encountered Barnaby, thank God), but I am horrified at the possibility that my four year old might get involved.

What a weird idea, and a complete and utter waste of everybody's time.

Have you asked the teacher what the learning objectives are, how she is assessing whether they have been achieved and how she is taking account of her assessments in her forward planning for each child's individualised learning (no I'm not a teacher, just good at picking up jargon...).

YANBU!

My kids are hooked on Oggy too.

Re Barnaby, just tell the bloody truth and dont et sucked into all the competative 'parenting of Barnaby' that goes on with these things.

aaaaah the "class teddy"... I'm sure I started a thread on this myself when DS was in Reception.

My advice? Say you don't know what he did all weekend, and that he entertained himself. And then take photos of him swigging beer and wanking to internet porn.

ageingmum

what a pile of wank

I thought she meant Barnaby's learning objectives.

Photoshop could be your fried here. Take one stock shot of Barnaby - cut out on computer and paste onto various things:
On the moon with Neil & Buzz
on a pirate ship with captain Jack
etc....

If you can't do it on comp - cut and paste with paper and stick it in book. Add a short sentence underneath.

The options could be endless and it may give the teacher a laugh.

Can't remember the name of the one we had (only did it in nursery here thank god) but you had to record it in the first person. I remember writing "I was really tired after nursery so went straight to bed".

hang on, don't your kids LIKE having Barnaby though? I am sure no teacher would force a child who did not want (for whatever reason) to take him home. my Rainbows are all desperate to take the olivia mascot doll home each week!

we like him here and cannot see the problem.at our school you are allowed to request a particular day/weekend for him to come home, for DCs birthday party or planned day out etc

Yeah but it's not the dcs who have to write it up and make it look good that's the problem

Meant to put a there!

"making it look good" - so the problem is you are all too competitive/think you will be judged

what is wrong with "we played on the trampoline/watched Toy Story/i sat next to X while she ate her bangers and mash then she read me her reading book/ and then we went to bed"(any ONE, not ALL, of those would do)

Exactly Peed and we just get given it and it has to come back the next day as there are kids anxiously waiting their turn. They take a very dim view of late returns (as I found to my cost once).

I meant Hocus

I am not familiar with this bear you speak of, but the whole thing sounds totally surreal and a cosmic waste of time. Are you sure it's not a joke?

Do you think you/your DC would get in trouble if you took liberties with the whole Barnaby enterprise? E.g.

• Barnaby shitting in the woods
• Barnaby face down in his own vomit on a Saturday night
• Barnaby snorting a line in Boujis

Look on the bright side, at least it's not a living thing like a hamster which you might accidentally kill and then be lynched by a class of crying six year olds.

weekdays is not a good idea, ours goes home at weekends UNLESS a child requests for actual birthday evening, so each child gets once a year......suggest it to your schools on the next comments questionnnaire!!

Swine flu risk surely - I'm amazed health and safety rules allow it

InMyLittle - my brother DID kill the school gerbil one holiday - he fed it an acorn!

Hooray - not just me being grumpy (as dh says) - hate this bear and am considering such a severe allergy to fur that sadly he cannot come due to health and safety........is it just me or the concept of giving reception kids homework a joke anyway when they cant actually write - I've been though school once and am fully literate. Think sending the bears home is another way of snooping on our home environments - do toy with idea of home-schooling fairly often.

We had similar at Ds nursery school...waste of time. I did all the work and worried about my ds's drawing/writing ability in comparison ...
Soft toy always seemed to arrive on day when all we were doing was weekly shop and having fishfingers for tea..yet strangely everyone else was taking "Percy" to gymnastics, Kumon, swimming, Karate before doing some writing practice and having salmon and asparagus for tea!
My favourite though was the one who casually slipped into the diary that they watched a film about a rocket scientist and that did you know their daddy was a rocket scientist????

Ah yes, a blast from the past.
As a teacher, I was made to use the QCA schemes produced by the Government to make me a better, faster, smarter teacher.
I enjoyed the challenge he posed for the more competitive parents, and used to recommend they all looked at this site for homework.
www.perton-first.staffs.sch.uk/bbindex/index.html
I want to be reincarnated as Barnaby.

Yeah, Barnaby seems to have it pretty good. Kind of like a high-class escort, tho' obviously a bear.

I am a teacher and remember organising my year 3/4 class to kidnap Bear. We took digital photos of him tied up in a dark place (under our computer table) and wrote a ransom note. I think our literacy topic at the time was 'Letters for a Purpose'. According to some Key Stage One mums, this caused major trauma in the lower classes, but we enjoyed ourselves very much. Just an idea ...

That website is hilarious, Goblinchild. But, bemusingly, it says at the bottom that Barnaby Bear is a registered trademark of the Geographical Association. Wtf? still, explains why they are all called barnaby...

Our school bear was called Oliver. I was there at his 'birth' as they shipped my DS and a busload of 5 year olds to the Bear Factory to build him.

However I think the teachers eventually tired of him because when my DD was in Yr 1 and studying pirates (a dubious topic in it's own right) Oliver was tied up and kidnapped by pirates and their classroom trashed! Poor Oliver was never seen again...