pfb -in fact only child - off to secondary on Thursday...

[MaryAnnSingleton]

am being calm but every so often panic strikes me - ds is fine about it, it's just me fretting about roads to cross/ money for the canteen - will it get lost/stolen, what about the lockers, arghhh ! Plus,as with the beginning of every term,I'll miss him - I love having him here in the holidays !
It also means that I have no excuses not to sit at my desk and work on the job I'm meant to finish by the end of Seot...

MAS - I wouldn't send in extra ingredients. Practical Food Tech lessons are complex enough without:
"Miss, why's he got cinnamon and I haven't?"
"Miss, when do I put the cinnamon in?"
"Miss, he said I can have some of his cinnamon. How much should I put in?"
"Miss I put in 2 tbsp, is that too much? Can I take it out again?"

Tricky one, I think I would just stick to the basic simple ingredients (although cinnamon and cloves to me are the basic things to go in a crumble!

I am sure it will be lovely.

DS has to do a pasta bake next week - lord knows how is is going to transport it home. DH has suggested I go pick him up - just not what I need to be doing when I have to get tea on and then go to work!

Bellavita - ask him what he did in his last English lesson. I would expect that before setting this homework the teacher may have read some curses/poems or done some kind of work on this with them?

If not, tell him he must go and find the teacher tomorrow for clarification.

ds1 today brought home some Maths homework for Friday, which we can't make sense of. (Using multiplication only and the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, -1, -2, -3 and -5, make all the numbers from -30 to +30). If he can use 0.5 and so on, I think he will be able to do it, or if he can use division/addition/subtraction as well.

He's got another lesson on Wednesday, so is going to ask then. (But he is very confident and doesn't mind asking.)

Thanks roisin - I will.

roisin ! you are absolutely right of course- will stick to sending in the basic ingredients...he has to take an ovenproof dish too so I imagine he'll have to carry it back home (and heaven forbid he tries to stick it in his bag !!) Incidentally,the teacher can't spell 'recipe'
Ds tends to not write all the homework details down, so he'll come home not altogether clear about what he is meant to be doing,or at least why he is doing something - it's very frustrating as I can't really help him -though I suppose he must learn to get the right information and use it himself...today he had to research smoothies for some maths thing but wasn't clear about what he had to do or what info he needed - so hard to not interfere !
Am a little sad too that in his singing lesson book the teacher has put a sad face beside today's date whereas the previous lessons have a smiley face - I guess it means he didn't do so well today..he didn't seem to know if he'd done anything wrong or just not sung well..maybe he hadn't practised enough ? oh dear I am a PFB mum !

Roisin - have asked what he did and he said the whole class read a book called "Holes", he retold the story to me over tea.

DH and I have talked to him about going to see the literacy teacher tomorrow and have said to him that she will be glad that he has gone to ask her and he should not to be worried that he will be told off, because she would rather he ask than do it wrong/not do it at all. He seems ok with it.

that seems sensible bellavita

is it this book ?

Part of the story of holes is based around the undoing of a bad luck curse which was put on the ancestor of one of the boys in the story. I can't remember whether the specific words of the curse are included in the book or not - I don't think so, but I can't actually find my copy.

From what you have described, I'm not sure I would know what to start writing either! At first I thought of the sort of spell-writing "eye of newt, toe of frog" sort of style, but it's not really that, is it?

MAS - yes it is

MAS I presume he's got food tech early enough in the day that the dish will be cool enough to handle by hometime?

If you have a large one of those 'clip lock' plastic containers and an oven proof dish small enough to fit inside, I would recommend this as a way of transporting said desserts safely home.

I'm dreading ds1 doing Food Tech as he has long-ish walk-bus-walk journey each way and lots of bags/gear to manage as it is. I can just imagine upside down cakes will be the order of the day!

That's the sort of curse/spell I would have gone for before he told me about the book, but hey ho. Thanks for your help.

he finds the lids of those things tricky to open/close, so I think I might send him in with a big piece of foil to wrap round it and a bag for life to carry it in. DT is first thing so I guess it'll sit in the cookery room until home time ?

Imagine what Ds's pasta bake is going to look like next week!

Bleurrgghhh...! I'm just imagining re-heated pasta bake too.

ds1 is not over-endowed with common sense, and I really could imagine him just sticking a fruit crumble in the bottom of his haversack (the right way up at first...).

I expect food tech teachers are used to giving students careful advice about these things though?

We are hoping that they are giving careful advice about such things to students.......

I hope so... I just have visions of pasta bakes/crumbles being poured into school bags!

poured in and poured out! LOL!

the fruit salad had to be poured out the other week

never mind poured in, poured out, are the hot things going to be "cook - chilled" or will they be sat there festering till hometime?

We are expected to eat these things!

Oh dear! DD is doing Resistant thingy wiggy - her words not mine this term I'm really looking forward to cookery and fishing it out of her bag.... NOT!

DD has been given German Homework -to do a PowerPoint presentation on Berlin eeeeeek@messing about with PowerPoint! I hope she's had some lessons on it cos I'm rbbish at it!

How many Tech subjects do they do in yr7 generally? I've no idea what ds1 will do, he simply has 'Tech' on his timetable.

The school I work at is a Tech College, so they may do extra. In yr7 they do a session in each of:
Food Tech (what we called cookery)
Textiles (needlework)
Resistant Materials (metalwork)
Design and Technology (mostly woodwork)
Electronics (didn't exist when I was at school - they hadn't invented electricity!)

Ds's school is called an Arts and Crafts College, so I think they do quite a bit, although not sure what