The moving castle tea room touches down for the 29th time

[UniS]

Welcome to the tea room. Open to those with one child and those with more and maybe some with none ( hi dave the trucker).

This time we are heading to the mists and mellow fruitfulness of Autumn in a moving castle with a mind of its own. The roaring fire is maintained by magic and Mellors the gardener handles wine and spirits along with massage duties.

The first rule of the tea room is this
No fisticuffs.
The second is this
Put the kettle on for and help yourself to a

Oh, thats excellent news Mistle - hope the other gp will have some useful advice

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[cuppa] lovely !

I can't bear the thought of knitting needles - my grandmother had terrible scars from scratching with them - she was in plaster from armpit to ankle for 5 years in total, so I can only imagine how bad that was
I did tunnel a finger through bandage layers earlier, only to discover that the itch is under a dressing

DS is v pleased that he got into all his choices of after school activity - cooking, construction, forest school and football. Plus gymnastics and ballet at lunchtimes. I vetod karate

Its good that he got what he wanted. Why did you veto karate out of interest? MC really enjoys it - and mithered me until I started taking him to Saturday classes as well - which is how he's managed to get one belt ahead of most of the rest of the year group now (although there's someone else that's several belts ahead of that because he attended Saturdays for a long time). I like the fact that there is so much about control, rules, behaviour, and it really concentrates on defence. He knows that he's not allowed to use it unless he's defending himself. He was practising a kick the otherday - standing well back from me - and underestimated how long his leg was and accidentally kicked me - above hip bone level and really solidly (even though he didn't expect to make contact) he was very apologetic - but I was surprised at how much it actually hurt!

We have the lunchtime choices coming up... he's going to continue with French (his TA this year is French and can chatter away to them in French sometimes which is good too) - its going to be a hard decision as he does like hareing aroud the playground too.

5 years in plaster to that extent! Was it back related? Yes, I can imagine that you'd shy away from them. You'll have to get one of the smallest nmbs to see if they can help out at all!

Whata lot of after school clubs you have on offer! I guess bigger schools can offer more. I've signed boy up for after school cookery club. KS1 have no lunchtime clubs at all. Only years 5 & 6 have more than one afterschool club night. Lots of kids do dance one day a week but thats not a school club.

UniS - mc did 4 afterschool things last year - and is signed up (I hope) for 5 this year. He only did French at lunchtime last year, although he could have done another. Not sure about lunchtimes yet.

I vetod it because I'm really not sure I could trust him to not use it out of class atm. But also, he has enjoyed the football holiday club, and I'd like him to keep working on his ball skills a bit extra as a lot of the boys do football/rugby outside school, and he doesn't have an opportunity to play casual football either

DS has french and german lessons in school - he's loving german having just started last week. Fortunatly I can manage at his level in both

Nana had bilateral congenital dislocated hips - back then, they didn't check for it early on, so it wasn't recognised till she was 2. So the hip ball and socket hadn't grown right. GOSH did get it sorted in the end, and she lived a fairly normal life till she was 30 and her left hip disintegrated, so it had to be fused - a year in hospital (her 3 children saw her once) and 2 years lying flat. She was a lovely lady, but very damaged from being separated from her family for so long at an early age

Ah - we have football on a different day from karate, so don't have to make that choice (which is good). I'm really impressed with the discipline that's instilled in the children - and that includes things like making them understand that its not to be practised 'out' - he's allowed to practise at home or at the club only (apparently ).

UniS - The availability (or not) of after school clubs is about more than the size of the school, at least in my experience. The two schools I know best around here are of identical size. One has about four after school activities per week, not all of them open to every year group, so each child would probably be eligible for one activity at best. One has about four after school activities every night, so that depending on what year group the child is in, they might have a choice of about five or six activities in a week.

I think a lot depends on how keen the headteacher is to extend the after school provision and how easy they find it to find volunteers to run the activities (or activities which can be bought in at a reasonable price).

DS's school is pretty small as they go - 250 children or so from reception to y6. 6 clubs are provided externally, but the rest by teachers/tas. y1/y2 have a choice of 2 or 3 a day, 3-6 more like 6 (but obv this includes a lot of sport and music)

Our school is only up to Yr2 - move then onto 'Junior school' up at a site shared with the senior school. So I should think that there are about 260 ish of them - although I don't know how many nursery groups they've got - last year they did 3! Ds is in one of 4 classes for his year group - which does mean that they have plenty of choice in terms of potential friends which is good.

Most afterschool groups are external, although there's drama this year which I've put Ds down for - and one of the TAs runs a cookery group one day a week (but it clashes with football). Most of the lunchtime ones are free except French and Spanish.

TW - I think that Mellors has been off for a carriage ride on that other thread with MmeL! I hope that Earl Grey is enjoying the outing.

at Mellors - was he playing propriety as the groom then? Or was he dressed as Lord Sherridan? tutty tut!

MT - how old was MC when he started karate? I want to put miniThumb into a self-defence class, looking at ju-jitsu or some combination training that is available here, but not sure whether 4 is too young. I can't believe he's going to be 4 in December! He can start to wear the green t-shirt then :)
Don't know how I'm going to fit it all into his week - he needs to go to pre-school next year in Feb as well, to get used to the whole idea; plus he has football and dance class, and I need to start him on swimming lessons in the next couple of weeks - wah!

CMOTD - good news about being able to start riding again in the next couple of weeks - is that when the cast comes off? re. your gran and the whole CDS thing. :(

Rah! for Flora and NMBs and Twiglets a GoGo

UniS - hope you're ok and stay ok.

So I can't sing Summer is a-cooming in, hey nonny nonny and away we go then?

ToddlerScout is a geek (just like his dad).

MC has chosen to do recorders, choir and French which pleases me

He was Year 1 when he started karate - although one of his friends started earlier as his brothers did it and he went along. So MC was 5.5.

Lucky you coming into summer! We didn't really have one this year.

Mellors was definitely togged up as Lord Sheridan Thumb... Obviously likes a bit of costume drama.

Interesting about the after-school stuff. DD's is a big primary (420 pupils) with what I THOUGHT was a decent range of after-school stuff. Nothing like CMOT's array though! DD is doing performing arts after halfterm (it was over-subscribed, so the kids will do six weeks each instead of the whole term), with the other offerings being football or French run by external agencies, or yoga, which is on the same afternoon as performing arts. She's also doing the cello (paid, in school time) and choir (free, school time again).

DS is at a school of around 200 pupils, up to 30 in a year group so only 7 classes. I think one of the biggest barriers to more clubs is the staggered lunchtime, with 4 different start and finish times a lunch time club can only be run for a small number of year groups, in reality this means KS2 get a few lunch clubs as all of KS2 finish lunch at same time but its tricky getting the right kids through teh dinner hall in time for a club.

They get plenty of sport tho so long as you like tag rugby, cross-country running and netball.

Twiglet suprise, ha ha, the suprise is.............

Wow! There are no such things as school clubs here, I'd never even heard of them before. The kids do clubs in the village. We can choose from swimming, ballet, yoga and gymnastics this year probably. Once he turns six he can also do scouts, hurling, football, soccer and rugby. I'm going to start LittleDeer on swimming again, it'll be on Saturdays. I'm going to leave anything else until after christmas as he's just started school and is tired for a few hours in the afternoons. Then I'll probably put him in one more class. Kids over here don't seem to do as many structured activities I think.

LittleDeer is at a school of 120 kids, spread over 8 years.

they are chocolate covered twiglets and taste yummy.

LittleDeer - makes our 260 ish for 4 yrs inc nursery rather

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Yes, please!

Watching masterchef Ireland in front of the fire.

Mistle and CMOT, are your schools private or state? Our school (state 120 pupils) offers various sports, art club, knitting, dance (run by a mum) and choir at times. I think the eal limiting factor is how many teachers are willing to do yet another unpaid extra. I used to do computer club, languages and play rehearsals for the class play (rehearsals not allowed in lesson time). As I have become less motivated by the team spirit at school it has dwindled to .... nothing. I tend to spend every minute from 8am to 5.30/6 doing planning, preparing for Ofsted, etc, anyway.

Lovely lovely day today. I so enjoy the change of light in September, with glorious sunshine, gale-force winds (strange combination) and robins singing their hearts out in the garden. You don't really hear them in high summer.

Very odd day here. Strange, rapidly-changing weather.

The elementary school I attended back home had 150 students for kindergarten up-to-and-including 8th grade (so, nine years). We were tiny!

Dh went off to work tonight and won't be home until either Sunday or Monday afternoon. It should really be monday for him to earn his normal amount but he wants to finish on sunday as he's exhausted.....already. This is his first week of trying to combine a full time job and a phd (with required classes in the first year), all four hours drive away from home. I don't think we're going to see him until April really . I can deal with this craziness but worry about LittleDeer .

LittleDeer - would it be too disruptive to just move there for 6m? I know you've just re-settled after your big trip but still - that sounds evil. :( Or are the job and the PhD all in different directions?