gratefulforhelp's austerity measures

Brodiebobs

I know some one who was advised to have an abortion at 24 weeks as there was an 'abnomality' on the brain at the 20wk scan, she refused as they'd been trying for 5 years and she couldnt guarantee she'd ever get pregnant again. She had him early at 32 weeks but he was a pretty healthy 5lb only in special care 2 weeks and allowed home, couldnt find the abnormality in any scans after birth. Its really scary that people take as gospel what medical professionals say but often they can be incredibly wrong!

gratefulforhelp_2

Yep, it's not the first story I've heard like that. Bless that baby and his Mummy.

gratefulforhelp_2

Michelle, if you pm me your email again, AF say

Yes she should have had a small credit added to her account. If you let me know your friends email address i will check.
Kind regards

cha97michelle

Only just noticed that hon. How kind of you to do all that emailing on my behalf. I was just thinking it was nice you had credit. xxxx

I'll send you a PM. Not been online too much today with the kids. I've been playing with some word magnets with DS1 this afternoon. I am such a school teacher, but he was having fun.

gratefulforhelp_2

That's really good, we should be doing more of that, I got some triangular pencil grips, but promptly lost them...

Busy day doing banking and getting building supplies. Took advantage of the storming tesco uniform offer. Coat, bottoms and 3 polos for £15 free delivery.

cha97michelle

My husbands boss's wife is an ex primary teacher. Her DD is 3 months younger than my DS1. We met up a couple of weeks ago and she was horrified DS1 was being sent home from nursery with a reading book and 3 spellings to learn per week. I don't know why she was horrified. Surely it is good to have them doing stuff if they want to? School wouldn't have him doing it otherwise.

She was more oh, let them play when they are at nursery, but believe me they do play.

It just made me think maybe I overkill it a bit. I have got him loads of new books for the summer hols. I guess as long as we don't do it all day every day.

Lois_E

If he wants to do it, that's lovely - let him do it. But I'd be unhappy with a nursery that was making children learn spellings if they weren't ready to enjoy it yet. Having to do school work whether you want to or not is something that should wait until they're older than nursery age, IMO.

On the other hand, the prevailing view among educationalists is not to let children learn to read before school even if they want to, which is silly.

Both sides of the argument are trying to force all children to follow the same developmental path at the same rate. But children are people, and people are individuals.

cha97michelle

Lois_E wrote: »

If he wants to do it, that's lovely - let him do it. But I'd be unhappy with a nursery that was making children learn spellings if they weren't ready to enjoy it yet. Having to do school work whether you want to or not is something that should wait until they're older than nursery age, IMO.

On the other hand, the prevailing view among educationalists is not to let children learn to read before school even if they want to, which is silly.

Both sides of the argument are trying to force all children to follow the same developmental path at the same rate. But children are people, and people are individuals.

Thanks lois. I'd have a job stopping him reading at the moment. He was driving me mad when we went to Tesco yesterday trying to get me to read all the signs to him, even when I was driving. Then getting cross if I hadn't seen it and couldn't tell him. They haven't got all the children doing it. There is about half the nursery class who are, and I don't know how many do spellings, but he is sounding out everything and really going for it. I'm stuck between wanting him to do well, and helping him do what he wants to be able to do, and not wanting him to get in front before September. I can't see how it hurts though to read. He's 5 in October, so good that the school let them if they are ready, and as school/nursery are the same one, I guess it helps them.

I'm not as bad as one of my mates. She 'makes' her son sit and do handwriting and stuff for an hour every Sunday. We do daft stuff like we have bath letters and spell words, or I bought a pack of cards with letters on one side, with a word on the other, so you can play go fish or snap. School seem to do it like this. We also love the cbeebies mag, and counting lego bricks while reading instructions together , and many other little games.

He's also doing stuff like he sat and drew me a picture, then wrote mum and his name on it with loads of kisses, then hid it under his bed and gave it me the next morning.

DS2 is the complete opposite, and doesn't really want to play this sort of game though he's equally bright. He loves books, but he's listening and watching and might be the same by the time he is that age.

I think DS1 is clever enough to get what reading means. He won't have to ask us to read to him. He can follow instructions without an adult to play a game without waiting for us to have free time.

It's interesting to hear what different people do, and helps me judge whether I am too much the teacher or not. I guess like you say it depends on the kid.

Lois_E

Two of my brothers and I all learnt to read ages before we went to school. My mum says I was just desperate to learn because the other people in the family were all too busy to read to me for as many hours and hours as I wanted stories! But my other brother wasn't interested - he wanted to build things and take things apart and didn't care much about books. So she didn't bother with teaching him more than a bit of letter recognition and he learnt to read when he started school at age 5. We all ended up achieving much the same academically when we grew up - the one that wasn't bothered about learning to read now has an engineering degree and a job that certainly earns more than I ever will as a teacher.

CathT

This is something I have been thinking about with DD. She is 3 in September so will be almost 5 when starting school. I just wondered if she should be able to do certain things when she starts as she will be one of the eldest. She is showing signs of wanting to write and can do an 'a' and an 'x'. She pretends to write a lot as well. I want to encourage rather than push her.

She moved into the classroom in nursery yesterday but from what she tells me she just did some singing in there and then had a sleep!