Disorganised threesome

Gabe

Many school mornings become fraught around 8am when Gabe and Eliza are due to be leaving, but one or other, but usually Gabe is trying frantically to find something.. football socks… homework.. door-key. However, his most enervating practice is to state at 8pm on Monday that he needs ingredients for a food tech practical lesson the next day. His German tutor is due and so L and I are left to decide whether to send him to school without the materials for his GCSE class, or blink and go shopping for him. 

Eliza

Eliza conveys an impression of precision, yet there’s wooliness in there, too. Her violin went missing earlier this term. It had to be at home, she insisted, demanding search parties from the couch. Or it had to be in one of the cars. ‘Are you sure you’ve checked properly at school?’ L asked repeatedly. After two weeks, the instrument reappeared. It had been in a cupboard in th  music department. 

Robin

Robin’s disorganisation finds expression in a constant turnover of school PE kit and loss of letters home from school. He rarely ends a term with the same sports clothes he started with – losing, borrowing and acquiring as the terms goes on. The twenty minute walk home is enough time for important letters from school, with announcements of events and opportunities lost from (usually in the depths of) his school bag. Homework assignments also rarely make it back, meaning text appeals to other parents and a direct request to his teacher to publish the homework on the school website. 

Big school

Eliza

Eliza has started at secondary school. She has settled quickly, showing no particular anxiety, other than one: getting lost. She walks to school with Gabe, less for safety and company, than just to make sure she knew the way in her early weeks. She was concerned about finding her way around the school with its oddment of buildings and long corridors. Gabe says he has seen her looking lost, studying the map given to new girls and boys. He has even helped her find the classroom she sought. 

On a day L was working late, Eliza gladly accepted the task of meeting Robin out of school. “Ok” we said, “describe your route from your new school to your old school.”

“Well, to start with, I’d turn right.”

“No! It’s the other way!”

Gabe

Gabe has started his GCSE courses and with that has come a novelty: homework. This staple of schools is referred to at the grammar school as ‘extension studies’, as it doesn’t have to be done at home. And Gabe has always taken advantage of this, finishing extension studies in class or in breaks so his home time remains free of schoolwork. But something has changed this year and now we see him regularly at the computer with his books out. 

Robin

Robin has chosen to move from packed lunch to school dinners. From the security of ham sandwich nearly every school day for three or four years, he has put himself at the mercy of the lunch menu. So far, two days into this trial, he has eaten a baked potato with cheese and chicken in a sauce. They sound like modest choices but actually represent dramatic broadening of his dietary palette. 

Anniversary weekend

Eliza

Heading south by car to Nan and Grandad’s on Friday, Eliza occupied herself by:

• playing the successive initials game (i.e. naming someone whose initials are AB, BC, CD, etc)
• doing her homework, which happened to be familiarising herself with the songs for her Easter concert – which she did by singing them over and over again
• making up her own song about a fox who pounced and a rabbit who bounced.

At Nan and Grandad’s, she became cousin S’s playmate. This involved writing numbers, names, drawing animals and a game of hunt the peg.

Gabe

Gabe spent Friday and Saturday coolly telling people how much he was looking forward to his cup final on Sunday morning. Something switched on Saturday evening when all the signs of anxiety struck. A bad night’s sleep was followed by a grumpy, upset and downbeat journey back to the football match. But on the pitch he regained his cool – not only playing well, but with a smile, throughout the tense final. He hit the post in extra-time before his team conceded two late goals and lost 3-1.

Robin

We stayed at the sausage dog B&B. Last time, Robin had fled the little dogs. His canine-phobia is little diminished, but the low-slung beasts fascinated him and made him anxious at the same time. A door remained between him and them for the whole visit.

 

Hall party

Robin

We held Robin’s fifth birthday party in a large, traditional wooden-floored, community hall. He and nine lads keenly contested running, dancing and spinning games, while two girls clung to their mothers. The party-goers kept up the pace for two hours and remained good tempered and well-behaved throughout. Not a single tear of frustration, upset or anger was shed. Most of Robin’s presents were jigsaw and/or Star Wars themed, as they had been at his family birthday tea two nights earlier at Pizza Hut. In fact, Robin was irked at any presents that didn’t stick to this theme.

Eliza

Eliza and her friend A provided my highlight of the party. They performed a dance routine to a tune they know from school ‘Wake up and shake up’. They sashayed from left to right, spun and kicked. Ten little boys competed with focus and fervour to match the older girls’ moves and win the prize.

Gabe

The series of Gabe’s excellent school reports continued at L and my meeting with his class teacher. Mr R, gently camp and sporting knitwear, enthused over Gabe’s ability, speed of learning, attentiveness, general knowledge and openness to a challenge. He indulged himself, but even more, us, with a speculation about what Gabe could be in 20 years time: a chemist, a linguist, a mathemetician, anything. He was as surprised as every teacher has been when we’ve mentioned how overwrought Gabe can be about school, and homework in particular, and promised to speak to Gabe about this.

15 minute poet

Gabe

Gabe knocked off the following poem for his homework in a little over 15 minutes under pressure of missing something on tv.

About Reflection:
Reflection means being quiet
and thinking about the past
Regretting when you told your mate
that your were really fast,
Remembering the day
that you won your first medal,
Telling mum and Dad
that you broke the piano pedal,
But most importantly of all
Reflection means,
Remembering those happy days
when you didn’t eat your greens!

Eliza

For the past few weeks, Eliza’s pale, thin body has been dotted with moluscum – small warts. They’ve clustered at the tops of her legs and their itchiness can make her miserable. They are becoming redder, which may mean they’re about to subside.

Robin

Robin wore his new school shirt, shorts and shoes to pick up Gabe and Eliza from school on Friday – a few days before he starts in reception. He skipped down the road from the infant school, tripped and thudded his head on the pavement. A graze and a bump remain on his forehead.

End of the school year

Robin

Robin ends nearly two years uneasy association with St Anne’s Playgroup. As a fresh two-year old, he sobbed when left and didn’t want to play with the other kids. As time passed Robin moved from upset to indignance. Finding out it was a Playgroup day tripped him into a surly mood with complaints that he didn’t like the place. This hasn’t been the experience of the group’s staff who report him as active and cheerful. Will five days each week of reception be better welcomed by Robin in September?

Gabe

For the final month of term, Gabe’s homework has been to work on his project. This has given him nearly four weeks to procrastinate and put barriers in the way of getting on with the task. Then faced with a Monday deadline, he buckled down on Sunday evening and early Monday morning. He has produced, with strong moral and a little practical support from L, an interesting and well illustrated 16 page project on Spain.

Eliza

Eliza has ended the year just as she began it: by getting a Golden Book mention for being “really super at everything.” She showed unusual thrust in this final week. By responding fastest to the teacher’s enquiry, Eliza has brought home three stick-insects for the school holidays. They’re even coming to Devon with us.

Who am I animal?

Robin

This 20 questions-style word game has been a favourite for years. Robin’s role has been limited to saying ‘yes’ to whichever animal is first guessed.. until this week. At bathtime, he participated fully, answering a whole slew of questions when it was his turn. The information we gleaned wasn’t too enlightening, but we had, we thought narrowed the beast down to one bigger than a rhino and smaller than a giraffe. Finally, our questions and guesses dried up and we had to give in. Robin was chuffed and chuckled as he revealed that he was.. a flower.

Gabe

L took Gabe to an assessment by a 12+ exam tutor. He came out with a reading age of almost 13, a spelling age of over 10 and close to 100% on the numeracy test. He was ‘top of the tree’. Meanwhile, three months into the school year, Gabe feels he had learnt nothing new apart from German and science. L & I went to see the teacher of his year 3/4 class to begin to pressure the school to move him into the year 4 class. Later on the same day as his tutor assessment, Gabe fussed for over an hour about doing some homework that he eventually completed in 15 minutes.

Eliza

Eliza has moved into her new room. The walls are painted blue, balanced with a pink lamp, lightshade and bean bag. Encouraged to use the move to clear out her old toys, Eliza is hedging: only taking certain items to the new room, but not wanting to bin the rest, which are left around the room that now belongs to Robin.