Meet in the middle at the schultuete shop!

[PiratesKnittingTreasure]

Here we are .

Hellllooooo!

Hope holiday was fab LG .

Parents evening for both boys was wonderful [very proud mummy emoticon]!

And I got to see gorgeous Mini Gig (and her lovely mum!) so a good day all round!

Aw, that's nice re: parents evening CEO.

I appeared to have killed the thread - I though that was CEO's job!

Hello, no excuses for not being here, but I'm back now!

Just heard that things look favourable from planners re change of use to residential and also possible conversion of garage. They aren't so keen to change strip field to garden though. Still need to put in formal planning applications though. Need to go and double check a few things on the house then we could be instructing solicitor next week

Hope all OK, How's kitchen LaG

DT - did ds get into local school?

Gig - how's the back?

Domestic, so pleased you had good parents evening for both.

Had Stefan's school on phone today, he's been arsing around (no other word for it) we've had words!! ..then a cuddle! Not sure about all this teenager stuff, could have at least waited until he's 13 on Easter Saturday.

Lisa's back to Germany at Easter as missing boyf too much but she will hopefully come back in may to do her exams.

Other boys OK. Stefan and Tristan off to York for scout weekend tomorrow (weather permitting as snow's onthe way again)
Ethan's coming on sloooowly at school. Not keen on reading or writing but he has just announced that I passed the kitchen inspection, gave me a certificate(scrap of paper) and said congratulations, you don't have to have another inspection now. I think OFSTED got to him too!!!

Nigel's still up and down.

Work's still great but hard work. Going down to 4 days after Easter which will be much better for all of us.Keeping everything crossed that they can afford to keep me on in September. We';re taking Nursery into my class too so that will boost numbers.

Lots of news deb- fingers crossed about planning and keeping you on at school but sorry Ethan has been playing up. As I know dss tried dh patience many a time. He is ok now- applying for lots of Jobs, getting some interviews so fingers crossed.

Had MRI on shoulder/back to see what going on and now have sore hip as standing awkwardly and carrying big gig. Also having paranoia as need small lump near original site checks out (it is very small and I think was an insect bitr but not sure).

Aside from that am good- tho half dead as mini gig teething.

Any Easter plans? We are off to France.

Hi Deb, you sound busy busy busy! No advice on teenagers whatsoever - but beginning to understand why boarding schools exist !

Great news on the house! Fingers crossed for work - still can't decide whether to go back to teaching or not, change my mind on a daily basis!

((((((Gig)))))) sorry to hear you're in pain still - and the sleep deprivation isn't going to help at all. Hope you get some resolution soon x

Easter plans - we're off to Bath sans enfants . Supposed to be fitting in a Moonwalk training walk but with this weather don't know what's going to happen .

On here before school to check for road closures, still snowing here. Keeping everything crossed for a snow day!

Gig - hope you're feeling a little better or at least getting some sleep. When do you get MRI results? Friend's daughter has been through something similar to you, has had a lump appear again recently and it was muscle wastage so nothing sinister.

Domestic - Have a lovely time without the boys. We're hoping for a night away over the holidays whilst staying at Mums. If you've looked at the new National curriculum for 2014 that will persuade you not to bother with teaching again!I think parents need to know what rubbish this government has in store for their children.

Hello everyone. Sorry for being AWOL.

Deb - you always sound like you have so much going on. Hope you get your snow day and have a good Easter holiday. Lol at Ethan inspecting you. Fingers crossed for more good news on the house.

Gig - have a ((hug)). Let us know when you have your results.

Hope the Bath trip is good. I still need to sponsor you for the moonwalk. Keep nagging!!

We are edging ever closer to having a kitchen we can move back into. Hopefully this weekend. It's looking good. We have the PILs visiting as of tomorrow. DH thinks this would be the ideal time to commence potty training DS2. I think DS2 might be ready, not sure that MIL and a partial building site will help. On the other hand at least I won't be stuck at home on my own. Maybe Dh can take the lead . Thoughts?

Hi guys, just to let you know Gig is back in hospital waiting an operation. She's fine but bored so lots of distracting talk please .

I'm with her at the mo but she's probably getting bored of me now!

Hi everyone!

Gig - sorry to hear that you're back in hospital. Hope you're bearing up ok and have some very un-Mnetty ((((())))) from me.

Exciting news re: the kitchen LaG. Will there be some update photos? I'd let DH take the lead on potty training, for definite Or does he think MIL might take the lead? Joking aside, it doesn't sound like the best weekend to commence!

Did you get your snow day Deb? We woke up to snow today, but not a huge amount to be honest. We've had snow forecast for about a week now, but it's never come to anything. In fact, despite all my usual moans about the weather, we've got off quite lightly this winter, though I'll be very glad when Spring actually decides to turn up! Did anyone see the poor sheep on the Isle of Man?

Any particular reason for going to Bath CEO? No major Easter plans here. DS still in nursery obviously so we don't have the whole 'Easter holidays' thing and tbh, we don't 'do' Easter as much up here as people do in England. In fact only one of Easter Monday/Good Friday is actually a bank holiday (I always forget which one though). We trade it in for an extra day at New YEar That said, we'll visit PIL's on Sunday for lunch and fingers crossed some friends are supposed to be coming to visit/stay on Easter Monday but that really will depend on the weather as they're driving up from the midlands.

Not much else to report really. Still waiting to hear on the school for DS. I don't think I ever came back and said that DS seems to have finally cracked bedtime/sleeping through the night. It only took 4 1/2 years !!! Bedtime can now be done in half an hour most nights (though DH still takes ages) and he rarely comes into our room in the morning before 6am. If he wakes up early he'll still come in for a snooze and a cuddle in the morning, but that's quite nice!

Deb, I loved that Ethan was inspecting you! Sorry to hear about not-quite-teenage-woes. No advice here either, I'm afraid, but we're hoping you'll master it before we all have to deal with it

On teaching, I really worry about what the education provision will be like for DS growing up. I think we have a different curriculum and it goes by 'Curriculum for Excellence' I think, and it seems to attract pretty scathing comments. I kind of keep an eye out for threads about education on here in an attempt to improve my knowledge so I can support DS when the time comes. I find it worrying when I come across threads about homework being marked for say, creative writing or something, but spelling mistakes etc not being picked up on because that's not what the homework was for. That's potentially the equivalent of getting all your politics from the daily mail though so I do need to be a bit better informed.

Well, at work, so better get back to it. More snow falling outside but it's horrible scruffy snow, not nice big pretty flakes!

Hi all, saw Gig in hospital again today but she's hoping to be out tomorrow in time for Easter which is great news . Also had a surprise (for me anyway!) visit from Mini Gig which was lovely .

How weird that Scotland doesn't have the same Easter weekend as England - are you all heathens up there then?

Bath, because ILs live nearby and we're driving the boys there first and then heading off. We also need somewhere with good road walking as we're doing my 18 mile training walk on Saturday - romantic, eh?

You're going to seriously regret getting me started on the marking of English DT - I HATE it! Although Deb may have a completely different opinion of course! Not marking spelling mistakes is called "emergent writing" and is about not squashing the little darlings creativity so that they can write what they want and it's all about their imagination yada yada yada. I know this is simplistic and Deb is probably currently rolling her eyes, but you get the gist! What in reality it means is that by the time they reach Y6 they have been spelling the same words wrong for years and years and as you will all know it's bloody hard to undo something and relearn it. It's one of the reasons why the standards of spelling in this country are now utterly dire (if any of you have teenagers on your FB feed you'll know what I mean!!) and it drives me mad.

Deb, I agree with you about what Gove is doing to the education system in this country - it's absolutely disgraceful and makes me hugely concerned about how this generation of children are going to cope. I'm seriously contemplating teaching them a fair bit at home in the future - but that means fitting it in around a full school day and I'm not sure how practical that is .

Right, better drag my kids away from Dora and put them to bed .

We have the same Easter w/e we're just not that into it And we need an extra bank holiday at new year to recover, because we're all a bunch of jakeys .

Interesting re: spelling. I have to confess the good old fashioned 3 R's with a bit of grammar thrown in really appeals to me. We weren't really taught grammar at school and it is one thing that would have been useful all these years later unlike trigonometry

Oh, and in case of confusion, the schools are on Easter hols, but DS in regular nursery as opposed to a school pre-school, hence he's not off so neither are we!

Didn't get the snow day but instead of inset day tomorrow we are having twilight meetings after Easter when we hope snow has gone, so that means I have broken up a day before the boys!! Snow has been very deep, today was the worst drive to school, very pleased to have 4WD as drifts as tall as car and loads of new snow on road.Could you see Nigel's video on FB?

I think Domestic and I will agree to differ about the merits of emergent writing, but whilst I am pleased if Reception write cud for could , I wouldn't accept it from Y1.

What are Jakeys?

Get well soon Gig

Jakeys are rather fond of booze

Deb, do tell me your thoughts about emergent writing! I am quite keen to understand current teaching methods, thinking etc. We can get Gig to give CEO a kick in the shins if she gets too argy bargy

I'm not seeing Gig until after Easter so can avoid her kicks til then !

Problem is Deb, a lot of my Y6s still spelt could as cud . It is a really difficult problem - I'm sure it must be very difficult for a child who struggles to spell to see lots of corrections on their work, but even at Y6 I was not allowed to correct all their mistakes and would hear children say "but it must be right because Mrs Domestic didn't correct it"!

We are definitely not getting it right because the standards of literacy and numeracy in this country are woeful in comparison to other European countries but I honestly don't know enough about the systems used there in comparison to ours to know why this is.

Didn't see Nigel's vid on FB but the snow you have sounds mad Deb!! Can't believe it's nearly April!!

Oh and at trig DT - I remember having a big discussion with my maths teacher about what an utter waste of time it was (I was quite an arsey teenager - I know that will come as a surprise !) and I was absolutely right!! Never used it since !

Hey there.

Lots of interesting ed chat. I saw Gove on Question Time last Thursday. What he said didn't sound unreasonable (this was about having space for creativity in the NC) but I do think he went out of his way to wind up the Labour MP. He was very disrespectful towards her in fact. It was a curious approach to take.

Did anyone watch the Boris doc on Monday night? Whilst being fascinating, it left me feeling a whole lot more uncomfortable about him. He is a pretty slippery character.

PILs here for a few days. Potty training hasn't started. I will see what initiative (if any) DH takes tomorrow when he is off. If someone wants to bear the brunt of potty training instead of me, then I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Gig - thinking of you. ((()))

Gove is a twunt - official. He talks the talk but what he's actually doing to the education system in this country is dire - lack of local authority control, free schools, academies, etc. Aside from anything else the lack of economies of scale and shared best practise is going to cost this country a fortune .

Boris - hmm. Didn't see the programme but have read plenty that was covered on it. He's a deeply unpleasant character and I hope more people realise this before he becomes PM.

Yes to ILs potty training DS2 - but are they staying long enough to see it through???

I've been skiing with Nigel on my unexpected day off today, I'll try and post some photos on FB. It's been great but I'm aching now!

Emergent writing - encourages young children to have a go at writing without all the hang ups about getting it right. With my reception, I try to get them writing anything however they want at first then through phonics teaching they start to pick up what the word begins with, then with cvc (pet, dad, sat) words they begin to hear the last sound and then the middle sound. Words might not be correct but they are having a go so with might be wiv because that's how they say it or they haven't learned that t and h makes th sound.Then alongside this I teach the high frequency words , we do action words(pictures and actions for each word) at my school and the children learn words such as said, my, look, went, to ....

With my year one children I would expect them to correctly spell high frequency words that they have learned through the year, and also words which use phonics or spelling patterns they know. If they wrote beautiful as bootiful then that is ok at this stage as it is phonetically plausible.

I'm currently struggling(as a parent and reception teacher) with what the Government expects out little ones to be able to do at the end of reception. The level they are expecting in Maths is currently what you would expect a Year one child to do...and so it goes on, but don't fear because by next september the Year one children (our children) will be expected to do what a year 2 child does now. The problem here is that the children haven't changed, most are not ready developmentally, oh I could go on and on and on .... You shouldn't have got me started!

Happy Easter everyone

How wonderful Deb !

I get the idea behind emergent writing, but we don't appear to be improving literacy levels with this method which is what worries me. And I don't mean "worrying" in terms of SATs and government targets, etc, I mean worried that we are churning out children without a functional level of literacy and that is scary.

I don't know why the government are raising the bar constantly - children are now coming into school with lower levels of comprehension/speech etc then ever before so how they're then supposed to achieve more from there I've no idea .

As for not being developmentally ready, having DS1 at school has made me more certain than ever that we start our kids too young in this country - and that is with a child who is bright and currently doing really well! He is too young and should be making mud pies and playing, not learning phonics and number bonds .

Currently watching Gogglebox on the recommendation of a friend - it's crap!

On a separate issue entirely - any of your LOs get eczema? DS1's is getting really bad now and I wondered what everyone uses.

Very brief post as very tired but have to say I'm very glad DS hasn't started school yet.

Skin stuff - DS doesn't have the skin condition I'm too dog tired to spell correctly, but when I was researching products for his very dry skin (I appreciate it's not the same) Aveeno kept popping up. I now use it myself!

Thanks DT! Why so tired?