Hello all! I've been reading with interest lots of your messages and have come to introduce myself and ask for input :)
The decision has been reached, with upwards of 96% certainty (!), that dd1 (currently in Year 4) and dd2 (just started Reception) will finish school for good at the end of this term. I am unbelievably excited and every morning now I feel really sad to be shipping them off for the day, but they (dd1 especially) want to have time to say their goodbyes to their friends, and they also don't want to miss the school Christmas disco or being in the nativity play!
It's things like that that create niggling doubt about the decision to HE. I haven't met with any other HE families (yet) - partly because they're hard to track down outside of school hours and partly because I think we need to find out what works for us and spend time together before we start arranging this meeting or that trip or what have you.
I haven't give The Letter in yet as it's still 6 weeks away, and I am a bit scared that if I do it now I'll have to endure 6 weeks of people staring at me oddly in the playground, or teachers giving me the evil eye! Also, it seems a good idea to keep the option open to change our minds for as long as possible, I suppose.
What I would like is for my girls to have time to talk about it with their friends, for their friends' parents to talk to me so I can chat about it and hopefully not completely alienate them - I am concerned that suddenly their friends won't be available to come round for tea after school, etc., and I really want to try as much as is possible to maintain the (limited) connections we've made with other parents here (we've only lived here since this summer as moved from a different LEA).
Does a fortnight before the end of term seem like a good time to give notice? Can I even give notice of deregistration, effective from some future date, come to think of it?!
Any thoughts greatly appreciated - also any advice on what I can do to 'prepare' in these 6 weeks of eager anticipation!