Now the children have been back for a few weeks it’s time for a look back to see how things have gone. Conclusion; things can only get better. There were a few early issues, kids not wanting to do their homework, getting a bit lost navigating around the school, leaving various bits of uniform behind – all to be expected. Then there were the ones that we weren’t anticipating -losing an entire sports bag, missing a piano lesson and problems with co-ordinating extra curricular activities.
Imp has settled quickly, the only real issue with him is ensuring that he does the work he is set to the best of his ability. He tends to rush! He has however made some new friends and is starting to join in the sporting life of the school again. His main issue seems to be pain in the right knee from time to time which we will investigate with the consultant in October. Pixie is settling down now as well and seems to enjoy her lessons, but had to have two days off thanks to a pesky bug last week.
Perhaps it is Hpops who has been the unluckiest. It is she who seemed to be settling OK. Fitting in homework is a challenge as there is a lot of it but she is getting there and is embracing many of the new opportunities open to her. However on Friday she fell over in a fencing lesson and the end result was a broken finger. She has returned to school today and seems to be coping well but she now has extra homework to do as well as a school competition tomorrow evening. The weekends are filled with stage crazy and for the next few Sundays orienteering. I am sure she will recover from the broken finger fairly quickly but at the same time it means she cannot participate in everything as fully as she would like.
This was on top of the bad news that the girls riding school had been closed, initially temporarily but now looks longer term as they have had to re-home the horses with winter approaching. As Hpops has been there since she was around 6 she is reluctant to try somewhere else. Of course with her fingers out of action for the moment the issue can wait for a few weeks. Unfortunately we can’t say the same for her violin playing, she is meant to be taking her exam at the end of this term and we are not sure yet if that will still be possible!
At the same time I have been seeking a solution to the best way to spend my time. It seems as if there were more options than I thought to becoming a counsellor and so I now have a plan A and a plan B so, for the moment, I am just going to see what happens in terms of teaching and then execute one of these plans. It doesn’t seem possible that it is only a couple of months until Christmas and already the kids are on warning that no more things will be given to them until then as otherwise we start running out of options. It is difficult to work out what to get them now they are getting older as many of the things they want are very expensive or impractical!
Here’s hoping that the next couple of weeks at school are more settled and that the kids can make good progress. Writing has been going fairly well. I am making progress with typing the first draft of the kids book and have also typed and edited another couple of chapters of Tumbles 2. At the moment there are lots of distractions and every time I get a spare few days something seems to happen to prevent me doing it – but hopefully before half term I will be able to get some steady writing done.
