Help please with school activities week

Savvy_Sue

milliebear00001 wrote: »

In my experience, parents who teach their children that school is optional, depending on whether the activity on offer is personally interesting to them, are often parents whose children are absent a lot more than three days. They also do not have a leg to stand on when reprimanding those children when they later truant to do 'something more interesting'.

Well, the school never had cause to complain about my children's attendance, and they've never (been found to have) bunked off to do something more interesting on their own account. I think my main sin was not sending DS1 in on Sports Day, wilfully and deliberately, in his later years at secondary school. I know some people will think that sending a child with severe hayfever, prone to getting sunburned, to sit on a field for a day is somehow character building, but his tutor wasn't at all surprised by my decision.

I still don't think that five days of knitting for Activities Week is acceptable, and if that was all that was on offer - given the lack of control that seems to be being exercised - I would back the OP in finding alternative activities.

MrsTine wrote: »

For what it's worth - knitting isn't actually that "horrible" - I learnt it and it wasn't at school! Infact i think it's great she's learning something like that at school! Ditto crochet - people seem to think it's "old folks" who do them but it doesn't have to be... I taught myself crochet about 2 years ago (really old - 27 then!) and learnt to knit when I was about 16/17... (I did learn it earlier but had forgotten again...)
If you're not happy with one activity all week then by all means communicate that to the school, but remember that constructive critisism is far more productive not only in getting results but also in teaching your daughter how to deal with a situation... Instead of barging in f'ing and blinding like your post here then why not simply communicate like "My daughter has mentioned that she has been knitting for 2/3 days now and that she's finding it very repetitive. I was wondering if there were other crafts that they could do, maybe something I can help with or help with some materials for?" being as you are at home anyway (to be able to do crafts with her at home instead...)
Whatever you do try to be constructive instead of destructive

That was me, and I'm not the OP. Fortunately my days of work experience and activities week are almost over: DS3's last such venture is next week, and he turned down the chance of going to CERN in favour of a week in London, despite the fact that we visit London fairly regularly and he's never been the least bit interested in sightseeing.

There's nothing wrong with knitting, even for boys. But when a child - as the OP's daughter did - says she'd rather do school work than another day of it, something is wrong.