Anyone with a year 7 starting today?

[seeker]

I feel like a cat on hot bricks- can't wait for 3.30!

DS has lost his PE shirt already. :(
So far he as done PE in dress shirt & in a borrowed PE shirt.
I have promised that if I have to replace it, the replacement will have name label sewn obviously on it in at least 3 different places (sewn outside of shirt). He is lucky I don't plan to stencil surname on it in 4 inch high letters. I don't care if he looks like a 6 year old sent to summer camp, I am not pleased about spending a fresh £15 weekly.

Hi All - Bullies sorted, they got 2 weeks detention and had to write an apology to DS2. They are under no illusion it will not be tolerated either in or out of school! Very pleased with that, . Had another little wobble today, bus driver started to leave at home time, and DS1 had not got on, DS2 saw him coming and asked him to wait, but he didn't, so DS2 panicked and shout STOP!! The bus driver got angry and said nobody had ever done that before, and now DS2 thinks he will be in trouble tomorrow. We said "well done for looking out for your brother!"

Oh, and as for affection, it's either all or nothing at the moment, hugs and kisses, or shouting at me, saying I dont understand!
School dinners, £2.10 for a 4 item lunch, meat/ fish etc, 2 sides,(chips/rice/ veg/salad/bread roll) drink or pudding. I give them £3 if they want school dinner, but they have packed lunches most days.
Oh, and DS2 got his locker keys yesterday(£10), then lost them on the way home! I found them on the footpath they use to walk up from the bus stop

Glad I have found this thread, was pretty desperate on Monday with DS crying his eyes out, however he went off to school after I promised to talk to his head of house who was fantastic and immediately passed important info about him on to his teachers. Everything is much improved, but I feel on a knife-edge. He has been following another curriculum and also been down a year plus some home ed, new school were asking him to do stuff he had never heard of. Obv no-one read the form I filled in about it.
I tell you, I am exhausted with it all, plus working out what his homelearning actually requires, assuring him he won't get detention if he gets it wrong... (I hope). I need to be prepared to spend a good hour with him on homework each night - just in case.
I am feeling ridiculously cross with the few teachers who seem to make him a bit frightened. He got a late mark on his 2nd day - he was trying to find his tutor group but it was assembly. And I cried with relief when head of house was kind. Well that was a rant. I haven't dared ask about the toilets. ;-) oh, and pasta dish in the canteen place is £1.75.

Hi Mitchdafish Glad they seem to have taken it on board, lets hope he settles a bit better now. Must admit, my 2 are both terrified that anything they do slightly wrong will end up with detention, it seems the worst thing ever to them, trying hard to reassure them that even if this does happen, it will not be the end of the world! On the positive side DS1 got a merit award today for DT, and DS2 got one for PE, very proud of them both!

bubby....so glad things have worked out ok ...what a relief !

Mine has left his homework diary at school !...but luckely remembered what he has to do for tomorrow..hope it gets found in his last class or at PSA....otherwise HE IS PAYING FOR A NEW ONE OUT OF HIS POCKET MONEY !!!!!!....see I can be strict sometimes !!

Oh, and as for affection, it's either all or nothing at the moment, hugs and kisses, or shouting at me, saying I dont understand!

Same here, Bubby. Its really stressing me out, I am walking in egg shells, I keep asking him if there is something wrong he says no but he is really emotional! Is it just the nerves and pressure finding a release at home?

Oh dear. Just found ds's planner on his desk. Oops.

I get nervous panicky feelings if I notice a planner or anything else outside DS bookbag for more than 3 seconds.

I had to drive DS to school this morning because he started daydreaming & walked the route to his hold mini-bus pick up point, rather than to the train station (sigh).

lljkk......I know what you mean ...ds does NOT have French to day ...but I made him check his timetable 3 times before before leaving his French dicionary out of his bag !!!

I think ds was day dreaming last week when he stayed on the bus for too long and missed his stop !I reckon he thought he was on the slightly longer 2nd bus ride already !

I'm just the same with the books! I've started a basket system with a basket in the hall for her to put any books she doesn't need in rather than scattered all round the house, but am anal about making her check every three seconds her timetable for what she needs tomorrow. She's getting exasperated with me...

I had a panic moment today when I received a garbled text from her at 8.45, thought it said she was coming home but it said the bus was late and she was about to come home but got on it. Well thanks dd for that

Same here for books and boxes, bought them one each to put all books in, and frantically checking both rotas each morning and asking several times whether they have the correct ones for the day! Big problem starting to rear its ugly head here is homework, especially as most seems to be computer based and we have only one laptop and I can't afford the printer ink at the moment, let alone another computer! Causing all sorts of stress, and they are using it as an excuse not to do anything! They just don't seem to be taking on board that if the don't keep on top of it, it will build up so much they will not manage it all in time!

bubby... sounds a nightmare ....our school do 3x evenings a week "support centre"....(homework club?) where they can acess computers and internet possibly not available at home ...is that available ?

For us I think homework will have got its pattern by next week and we will know what day it will be set and the return date ...and by the 1/2 of the timetable he has done so far (!) it looks like he has 2/3 nights to do it..? Well not to do it ,but before it needs to be in.

Have to say though ..the way ds's time table is planned he has all lessons every day bar 1,....so for the sake of one exercise book I might as well let him keep them a ll in his bag apart from French dictionary ...which is heavy (ish)...might change if he gets given "work books"

I had meeting at ds's school tonight to explain things to us so they were at my mums house ..I got back later than planned and they were in bed...I will go and collect them tomorrow and "treat" ds to a lift to school while the others stay with mum !! I will be back in plenty of time to take the others to school.

Non uniform day angst!

Panic! Sorted out bags for them last night, could not find DS1s French book and homework, asked him this morning where it is and all he could -shout say is that it was in his bag and I have lost it and cant admit it!! Tried to explain its wasn't in the bag, and I am trying to help by asking after it, but he wouldn't listen, finally calmed him down enough to go through what could have happened, and he has admitted he took it out in Geography yesterday, but swears he put it back! I think it is in the geog classroom, but he won't have time to check befor French, which is first lesson,. He has gone to catch bus in tears
By the way, their school day is always divided into 3 x 2session lessons, so only have to carry books for 3 subjects maximum around each day, makes things a little easier.

Sorry, seem to be monopolising this thread at the moment!
Just been told by a friend whose son is in yr8, they don't need to print all this homework off, they can either download it to a memory stick and take that in, or even email it to the teacher! Why don't the schoo tell you this? She said she only found this out half way through last year!

As a secondary teacher, I would rather be emailed homework than have it brought in on a memory stick, because copying 30 odd files from separate memory sticks is time consuming.

DS lost his PE kit this week. Cue wobbly lip when explaining to DH why he hadn't put it by the front door as asked. Found it in French though, so it's all good.

I am assuming all is well. He seems very confident and comfortable.

I however am fretting about his maths homework being stupidly easy...!!

Thanks Bubby. Don't they love the merits?
I too spend hours double-triple-checking timetables. There is a homework timetable I don't understand. There is homework I mean homelearning I don't understand. However it's all working out pretty well considering we are all making it up as we go along. He's got used to being the slowest in the class.

The french homework was found......IN HIS LOCKER!, Madonna I have been emailing it across,I agree about the memory stick as, it theory, is all well and good, but the teacher would have to sort through all the other homework to find the bits they set.
My 2 have spent most of today doing "homelearning", as they ignored my advice to do it as it was set, and suddenly had loads to do before tomorrow. Their mates called and they couldn't go out, lesson learned, I hope!

Oh lor, last week's issue was armpit shaving - this week she's got her second period ever, just in time for the first swimming lesson. If I mention tampons she visibly tenses and gets really anxious - not helped by the fact that on holiday she started for the first time and we had a horrendous time when she was desperate to run down to the pool with dad and sister but couldn't get the hang of tampax, so she was sweating and crying in roasting hot bathroom totally unable to work it out (or in, indeed) and now unfortunately has tense and negative associations with trying tampax. However, I doubt she's going to want to be the one who takes in The Note either....

Am going to encourage a long long relaxing bath this evening and hope for the best before the lesson tomorrow.

As an aside, she's also been a mardy git about homework. She had to give examples of human, phsyical and environmental geography; the relating conversation about which went like this:

dd: I don't get what I'm supposed to do here.
me: ok, so you've got the definitions there, so human geography would be about people living where they do -
dd: [interrupts] i KNOW that, I just don't GET IT
me: well, like why people live in cities, or valleys, or near big rivers, and how towns and cities -
dd: [scowls]
me: well, that's ok, isn't it, right, so what about how the cities got bigger in the nineteenth century because people moved there to -
dd: i KNOW, I've googled that, I just don't get what I'm supposed to DO
me: well, say that that's an example of something you might study in human geography!
dd: GNAAAAAAH ....[dramatically buries head in hands on table].

Also, I was doing stuff upstairs, dd1 doing stuff elsewhere, at 8.20 this morning and suddenly became aware of a monologue emanating from the hall along the lines of 'oh FINE if everyone's just going to igNORE me...'

No, dd, if you're having some kind of problem in the hall (couldn't get the back of one of the Single Pair of Plain Studs, No Other Jewelry Is Permitted, on) and you'd like some help but people are in other rooms doing other things, they're not igNORING you, they simply don't know, and you need to come and find me and let me know you need help, not sit on a stair monologuing.

GAAAH. Sorry for essay. Seriously, advice on the tampax issue most welcome, please..... I assume I'll have to ride out the mardiness.

Can' really help with the Tampax issue apart from saying sometimes with youngsters a little KY jelly may help, along with LOTS of encoragement.
As for the mardiness -sorry, got the boy version x2 here, and its doing my head in really annoying, I was at a social event over the weekend, and met a lot of the parents of my two's former classmates, and we are nearly all suffering, must be a "I want to act like a High School kid" thing! Oh, and dont even get me started on the "I don't get it!" with homework, I told them both if they listened properly and asked questions when given their assignments, they would "get it", but, like the teachers words,what I say seems to be going in one ear, out the other. I'm positive its just a ploy to get us to do the blooming homework!

The trouble with "I don't get it" is sometimes neither do I! Whqt do you make of " Ask the people you live with to tell you about the food they ate when they were your age [easy enough that bit]. Design a chart to show your information [WTF?]"

As for the Tampax issue- I got dd lots of different sorts and some KY, and she disappeared to the bathroom for an hour and came out proficient. She was older than your dd, though- so not sure whether that's helpful?

Agree with the "i don't get it/understand what i am supoosed to do= If I keep saying this mum will get so pi**ed of she will do it for me " logic !!!

"WE" have 2 puppets to make for drama for thursday....I told him to make a list of materials he wanted/needed and I would organise that part.....

List so far....1)dunno ..what do you think?
2)paper maybe?
3) if you are going in the pound shop can you get those nice

sweets !

Be prepared for a raving bizzey incoherntly mummbling on about puppets in the next few days !!!

Actually I have loads of ideas (which he well knows !)....but he has got to do it !!!!

RE tampax ...no help as I have got boys ...but I personally prefered lil-ets...but was much older when I tried them......(18 and still stressfull !)...couldn't co-ordinate the applicator ...(still can't ..left it in once ! )