Back to school

It’s the weekend. Finally! We survived the first 4 weeks of the school term. It’s gone by quickly and so much has happened. No wonder we’re all feeling exhausted.

The past month has been all about starting a new year at school. Nicholas began first grade at the start of February. Students find out who their teacher is on the first day of school. They all gather in the hall and wait to be called by their new teacher. It was an interesting experience and it reminded me of the sorting hat from Harry Potter. There were even cheers from the children (and some parents) when the teachers introduced themselves and announced what grade they were teaching this year.

After these first 4 weeks, we think Nicholas is doing fine. He doesn’t tell us much without prompting, but we take it as a good sign. So far he’s been happy to go to school and on the rare occasion he’s uncooperative, it’s usually because he’s very tired. We can see that 5 full days of school still challenges his stamina. But we can also see that he’s grown emotionally. This week he took on something new and tried out Taekwondo at school. He did this all on his own (with our permission) and apparently did well. He enjoyed it and hopefully he’ll continue with it.

With first grade also comes homework. He’s been given a list of tasks from which he has to choose 1 to do each week. This week he chose to draw a map of his room. Phil tried to guide him a bit, but Nicholas had his own ideas of what a map of his room should look like. It was an interesting challenge to both Phil and my perceptions and I found myself wanting Nicholas to do it the “right” way. In the end, I let it go and he did his interpretation of a map in the style of a treasure hunt.

Nicholas has had a big month and along with starting school, he lost his first two baby teeth and rode his bike briefly without training wheels (still working on using his hand brakes). Catherine’s February highlights include her first visit to the hairdresser, riding her trike all by herself and calling her brother “Nish”. As a family, we went to Sydney for a short getaway around Valentine’s Day and we completed a family project which was a dollhouse renovation. Phil and I had a date night to see our favourite artist, Neil Finn, and Phil recently had 10 seconds of fame on WIN News to comment on a research project.

From Feb2013