Snow Days

This is my first blog post for ages because I just haven’t felt like writing since my operation. Britain has been in the grip of snow due to the ‘Beast from the East’ and Storm Emma, but we got off very lightly where I live. Despite this, there has been plenty of panic and disaster recovery processes in place. Here is a round-up from our week in the snow.

Frozen Boilers

It transpires that condensing boilers aren’t very good at coping with freezing conditions. If your condensate pipe is outside, there’s a high chance it will freeze, meaning that the boiler won’t work until it’s defrosted. Luckily, helpful gas engineers were sharing this information all over Facebook, so I knew exactly what to do, the only problem was, our boiler is on the first floor so I had to wait for my husband to come home and get the ladder out – I’m not allowed to lift it, remember. He defrosted the pipe with a hairdryer and re-set the boiler but it still wouldn’t work. In the end, he spoke to the person who installed our boiler, who told him he’d done the right thing but damp had probably got in, and it would eventually clear. It did, the following morning, though we’re still not sure the boiler sounds quite right.

My two favourite Facebook posts about broken boilers were from the plumber who told customers to allow the pipe to ‘Thor’ – I hadn’t realised we were expecting thunder! And the lady who asked if anyone else in her area was without hot water. Clearly she thought there was a national hot water network. I felt really sorry for the man who had successfully thawed his pipe with hot water, only to find that it had frozen again and he couldn’t get near it because the hot water from last time had turned to ice.

World Book Day

Despite the weather, World Book Day celebrations still went ahead at Munchkin’s school. Some schools postponed them, and the book tokens are valid for longer than normal to account for this. Munchkin and Alan went as Wenda and Woof from ‘Where’s Wally’. I bought the Wenda costume, but it took me the best part of a day to make Alan’s costume.

Where’s Wally? Here are Wenda and Woof.

 

Closing Schools

There was a lot of fuss from people who said that schools didn’t close for snow in their day. What they failed to realise is that staff don’t always live locally to the school, and whether particular schools opened was largely down to where the staff had to travel from. Munchkin’s school opened every day, though it closed early on a couple of occasions. Her two favourite cousins live in other areas so  they both had snow days when she was at school.

The first day that it snowed, I counted fifteen posts about school closures on two Facebook groups aimed at local parents. I think all schools need a similar process for notifying parents of closures, and parents need to ensure they’re acquainted with it.

Every morning, I checked my email to see whether the school was open, and then checked my mail throughout the day, just in case it closed. We parents agreed that text messages would have been much better than email. Once we received an email from school, the message then had to be relayed via Whatsapp and text, to account for the mum who couldn’t access her email and the dads who don’t get email, because it appears to be limited to one email address per family. On Friday afternoon, we received an email entitled, ‘Abandoning School’. I think a blizzard was expected, but it never really materialised.

Back to normal

It’s been raining today, and all the snow has gone. Munchkin is pleased that she’s finally seen snow. It snowed heavily when she was a year old, but she doesn’t remember. She’s disappointed that she still hasn’t been sledging. I didn’t think there was enough snow, but the local children managed somehow! Sadly for Munchkin, there was no way we could take her sledging this time, with me still recovering from surgery and her dad’s limited mobility. Hopefully I can take her next time it snows, or maybe I’ll just take her skiing at some point.

 

#Reblog: Which Teacher Would You Thank?

A few weeks ago I was marking a set of essays and feeling a bit sorry for myself with the amount of work I was doing for what seemed like,… The post Which Teacher Would You Thank? appeared first on Mission: Mindfulness – the blog.

via Which Teacher Would You Thank? — Mission: Mindfulness – the blog

This is the post that inspired my blog post about Miss Vain. Hayley from Mission: Mindfulness has put together a crowd sourced post where a selection of parent bloggers say which teacher from their childhood they’d most like to thank.

Do check out the rest of Hayley’s blog. She is a teacher, parent and blogger, and describes herself as a busy person trying to embrace mindful living, and also someone who is qualified to help others to embrace mindfulness.

Saying Thanks to Great Teachers

I’ve wanted to thank my favourite teacher for years. I’ve posted things about her on a range of Facebook pages just recently so I thought it was time I told a wider audience about the brilliant Miss Vain.

When parent blogger and teacher, Hayley from Mission: Mindfulness blog said that she wanted to write a crowdsourced post about teachers who have really made a difference, I responded immediately to tell her about my Year 2 teacher, Miss Vain. I then posted on a group called Lancing History to see if anyone remembered her or knew if she was still around. I had a number of responses from people who remembered her and agreed that she was a great teacher but nobody knew what happened to her after she left South Lancing First School (later renamed Freshbrook and subsequently closed).

If I’d been more organised, I would have posted this last week for World Teachers Day. I missed the boat for that one but did manage to comment on someone else’s Facebook post for World Teachers Day.

I was a summer born child and started school in the late ’70s. These days, there is a lot of concern about summer borns being too young to start school when they’ve just turned four. I went into a combined Reception/Year 1 class the September after my fifth birthday and nobody thought anything of it.

The following academic year, classes were moved around and I found myself in the same class as Autumn born children who had been at school a whole year longer than me. That’s where Miss Vain came in. She gave me the opportunity to catch up. She recognised that I was a keen reader and allowed me to read entire books in a single sitting. I quickly caught up and became one of the strongest readers in my class. I have always wanted to tell her that I went on to gain a 2:1 degree in English and am now a writer.

I can remember all sorts of things that Miss Vain taught us, including the history of our school. I lapped up information about it originally being a tiny building, with the Head Teacher’s office in the attic, and I was fascinated by the fact that there were once air raid shelters on the school field. I wonder if my interest in local history came from her.

So what else do I know about her? She was the Deputy Head. I’m not sure of her age but suspect she would now be in her eighties since she was older than my parents but younger than a grandparent. She wasn’t in the best of health – I think she was diabetic. She lived in the Brighton area – either Woodingdean or Rottingdean, I think. A lady on Lancing History said that she was still at the school in the late ’80s but didn’t know what happened to her after that.

If anybody reading this knows of Miss Vain, I’d like to know what she did after the late ’80s. Ideally, if she’s still around, I’d like to pass a message to her.

#FlashBackFriday: Are we encouraging our children to grow up too quickly?

There’s no Throwback Thursday this week, because I published a post for National Poetry Day instead. A version of this post about nursery graduation ceremonies and school starting age first appeared on my old blog. I’ve been in two minds aboout sharing it again, because I no longer feel so strongly about the things that seemed to matter when Munchkin was three.

I reluctantly allowed her to have her photo taken in a cap and gown when she left nursery. By the time she was four, she had changed her mind about dressing up, and now enjoys it. Thankfully there wasn’t a formal presentation, just a children’s party. I even more reluctantly bought one of the photos. It wasn’t a great picture.

Equally, whilst I accept that children in countries with a higher school starting age than the UK do well academically, I don’t necessarily think four is too young to start school. My daughter has thrived at school. She loves spending time there, is an avid reader and has just started doing maths in her own time for fun… I’m beginning to wonder if there was a mix up at the maternity hospital and I have someone else’s child.

A child that I know recently attended her nursery graduation.  I did’t even realise nursery graduations were “a thing”.  It seems they had a lot of media coverage last week, with one camp thinking they’re cute and harmless fun, and the other considering them strange or even pyschologically damaging.  They’re an American import and it’s worth remembering that US preschool leavers are around two years older than their British counterparts and therefore a little bit more mature.

Some pyschologists think the ceremonies place unnecessary pressure on children to achieve.  I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I definitely think they are encouraging small children to do things they don’t understand because adults think it’s cute.  There appears to be a universal belief that all kids like dressing up.  Munchkin would probably refuse to wear the cap and gown since she only likes pink fairy outfits.  I also doubt whether she would walk up and collect a certificate in a crowded room.

Primary school graduation also seems to be “a thing” in some places.  I got really confused when a friend’s child attended her graduation at a local university.  I thought she had an eleven year old genius!  At least children this age know what is going on, and why they’re doing it.  The real winners in all of this are photographers and providers of robes and mortar boards.  They must be making a fortune!

The age at which British children start school is another thing I’m concerned about.  Munchkin’s best friend is an August baby and just slips in to the school year above her.  She starts school in September and she’s really frightened.  Although compulsory education begins at age five, we start schooling our children at four, and I’m not entirely sure why when many countries start compulsory education at age six.  A teacher in one independent school I visited told me that these other countries have, “got it right”.  Independent schools tend to do the best they can in terms of only putting children into Reception when they’re ready, but this opportunity is less common in state schools.  In state schools, there are generally two choices: Start school in the September after you’re four, or miss the first (Reception) year at school and spend the following year (Year 1) catching up.

I think what I’m saying is, the USA can keep their graduation ceremonies.  I’ve only ever attended one and that was my own at university, and even then I felt a bit of an idiot in my mortar board and gown.  However, we could probably learn a thing or two from the US when it comes to starting school.

Photo credit: quinnums / Foter / CC BY-NC