My sons first impression after his first few days of Secondary (Feel free to add yours!)

[QuintessentialOldDear]

He is generally very happy, but has noticed the following things worthy of a mention at home:

"Mum, they all have World Records of SPEED DRESSING!" He is in awe at how fast his classmates tie their shoelaces, button up their shirts and do their ties. He says, "There is this kid, he literally gets out of his blazer and trousers in ONE move, and JUMPS into his pe trousers and manage to pull them up along with his socks!" (I guess this must be the gang that has moved up from prep and knows the drill.... )

Nobody says a word in class. Everybody works. All the time.
"We line up by the classroom. We hang our blazers on the back of our seat, we stand behind our seat not saying a word until teacher tells us we can sit down. Otherwise there is Saturday detention"

Oh dear.

chicaguapa we had a few comments about lessons being boring last week as DD felt they were just covering things that she's already learnt in Y6.

But this week is a whole different story as they seem to be knuckling down to the real work!

DD's chief woe yesterday was, 'I accidentally sat with some year 9s at lunchtime and I was bigger than most of them so they thought I was one!'

She seems to feel that this is the faux pas of the year.

My DS has a residential trip Oct 2-4 already! It is meant to be good for team building
The new year 7s have been doing Bikeability level 2. It's all go here.

My DD1 is loving her new school. She came home a bit tearful on the first day due to information overload, but this week has been fab.

Probably the most surprising thing is that she is enjoying PE (it was her least favourite lesson at primary school and she was always last in the class running race at sports day). She was thrilled yesterday to be one of only 3 year 7s chosen to help at the open evening in a couple of weeks. Unbelievably she has been chosen to demonstrate PE in the gym - hope they haven't got her muddled up with someone else...!

I nearly got her int big trouble yesterday when I couldn't find my phone so used the "find my iPhone app" to locate if. Unfortunately I chose my old phone by mistake and DD1's bag started beeping alarmingly in the middle of RE . I won't be doing that again.

Well, it has been two weeks, and it has been a revelation.

The morning used to be such a struggle for us, I could barely get ds out of bed. Now he is up quarter to 7, and out the door 7.15, to be in school early and in time to finish of his homework and "get organized". Long may it last!

He spends lunch time doing Touch typing in the ICT suite, and is up to level 3 already, and German club. This means he has French, Latin, Mandarin and German! He has taken on two science related after school clubs, but no sports.

Is 2 hours of games and one hour PE enough for a young boy? I think it is too little, even if he is walking to and from school, which takes 17 minutes each way, down and then up hill.

There's No excuse for classroom rules and "what is " lessons IMO. Lazy.

DD is happy & enjoying things so far, especially science lessons. She's got a small group of friends - two from primary plus two new ones - who go about as a little gang, and at least one of these friends is in any given class, which is a plus.

I worry too about lack of exercise - she has 2 x 40 mins PE lessons and that is it, plus gets a school bus which stops 5 mins from the house. They offer a lot of sports clubs but unfortunately dd really doesn't enjoy either team games or dance, which are the main options, sadly there isn't any swimming based club.

However she does say that they spend a lot of time rushing from one end of the school site to the other!

ATM she only has one out of school sports club (lifesaving, pool based in winter), and I do think that as the evenings close in & the weather gets worse at weekends this isn't so great. However not sure what to do about it!

One big difference I hadn't expected from a parents' viewpoint. I had thought we'd be much less in touch with what was going on at school when compared to primary. But, because she brings school books home every night, in fact so far I see far more about what she is doing in different subjects / how her work is going.

Thats true Takver, we also seem to be more in the loop with the work than in primary. We also had to go down to school yesterday to find a missing French book for the first French test, which is next week.

Now that they are learning some grammar and to string some sentences together, maybe ds will finally be able to use all the random Fruit and Vegetable vocabulary Madam X has taught since Y2.....

This week DD got lost... on the way to Geography.

Ï should not laugh but see the poetic irony in that.
Ds has only his geography homework left. He has to plot a route on public transport direct from school to another town.

Is it time to show him the London Journey planner, or the AA website? (Not that this would have helped your dd, Lancelottie)

Lol - I think I need to know more about Jennings and Venables!

Bit of a wobble from DD yesterday over music lessons

She's scared she'll forget to go to her lessons, keeps forgetting the code for the instrument store and is worrying over the music group she'd been so keen to join prior to starting the school but is now having second thoughts about

I will be treading carefully tonight!

I have been amazed by my DS's first fortnight in Yr7! The school seems to be amazing at helping them settle in and he is loving it. They have vertical tutor groups (20 pupils) and there's only 2 children (girls!) in his that he knows from primary school, but there's also 1 prefect per group who takes full responsibility for the yr7s' orientation in the first few days. I think that has been key to a smooth transition.

He has made friends with a boy who has persuaded him to go to homework club with him after school, because they can use the school colour printers to do their art homework! When i tried to get him to go to this club he said no because "only geeks go"

I am glad to say that my early years of 5 mum-and-baby or toddler groups per week has finally paid off; I know most of the mums of the children he is meeting (there are about 6 small primary feeder schools), and in fact, lots of the teachers, who returned to work once their DCs started primary. So I can chat with lots of people at school meetings, and DS knows he won't be able to get away with anything His science teacher used to be our neighbour and his English teacher is a good friend of mine. There are definite benefits to small country schools!

Oldbeanbagz, how did the rest of her week go? Pinkcheezy, that sounds very positive. Quite similar to our experience at Ds' school.

He very nearly got detention on thursday - I had not noticed there was a note on the parent portal to bring swimming kit.... My main concerns was friendships for him, and that seems to be going well, fingers crossed.

The rest of the week went well and having practised the Grade 4 piece every night, she's feeling a little more confident.

I'm hoping that her teacher will be able to persuade her to join the group after Half Term as it'll be good for her to play with others.

at nearly getting detention QuintessentialShadows but glad to hear that the friendships are going well.