Specs Appeal

I'm very short-sighted (around -9 diopters in each eye, to be precise) and I first had to wear glasses when I was 7, in the first year of Junior School.  I'm not quite sure how short-sighted I was at that point, but enough to be given glasses and to have to wear them all the time.

Doug also need glasses, but unlike me can actually function without them - I tend to walk into large objects like houses and land masses if I'm not wearing mine.

So when Jacob announced last year he was having slight issues reading the board at school, we marched him down to the opticians straight away.  At that time, there was only a slight prescription and not anything that warranted correction, but he's just been back for a sight test and his vision has deteriorated enough to warrant glasses.

At this point of time he doesn't need to wear them all the time, just when he's in the classroom or watching tv/playing on the computer at home.  And for reading, obviously.  But not for playing or in the playground etc.  We'll go back in six months to see the Optician for another eye test and to see how he's dealing with wearing glasses.

He's very excited to have them.  And being Jacob, he chose a very cool pair of specs :)

Dinner for four

I'm not entirely sure whether this is the norm or not, but we have previously found ourselves firmly in the "two dinners" camp i.e. I cook something for the kids at around 5pm, and then something else for me and Doug at around 8pm once the kids were in bed.  This fitted neatly into our lifestyle - we didn't really want to eat the same food as the kids day in day out, and Doug didn't get home from work until 7pm anyway.  We did try other options i.e. me eating with the kids and then Doug reheating a plate of that or cooking for himself when he got in, but that didn't really work. So two dinners it was.

A couple of things have changed recently.  The first is that the kids' bedtime routine has changed entirely and they're going to bed much later, which means that eating after they've gone to bed is no longer an option.  The other thing is that they're both becoming much more adventurous with their food tastes.

I was once told that kids should "acquire" all their tastes by the age of 18 months and that you should aim to expose them to as many different foods as possible.  And if you don't want to expose your children to the amount of salt and sugar in pre-packaged food, this means cooking it yourself.  However, I also found that there was a direct link between the time taken to prepare food and the likelihood that the kids would reject it out of hand.  So, by and large, the things I made out of recipe books specifically for children, the Annabel Karmels of this world, would be met with a "don't like that."

That's not to say that the boys have had a boring diet of chicken nuggets and chips - they would surprise me occasionally with the stuff they'd eat (last summer, the pair of them polished off Doug's smoked fish carpaccio in a restaurant in Italy), but I was always a bit wary of giving them "adult" food, mostly because I dreaded the possibility of creating a battlefield over food.  I try very hard not to get cross when they don't like something I've cooked, but it can be particularly trying at times, especially if I'm tired or a bit out of sorts.

However, I do think I'm getting to grips with the sort of things they'll eat or won't eat, and I'm getting quite good at guessing which of "our" regular dishes they'll take to.  They've always liked things like stews, rich pasta sauces, and mildly spiced things like kedgeree and korma/tikka type curries.  So recently I've tried things with stronger flavours - pork porkalt is a total winner, and they've enjoyed chicken basque and all types of stir fry.  They've loved "proper" beef bourguignon and stews with less savoury flavourings (redcurrant sauce etc) and Mexican food (fajitas, tacos, quesadillas, enchilladas, you name it), and when we go out for lunch or dinner, they love going to Chiquitos, Nandos and Wagamamas.  Chinese takeaway?  That'll do nicely.

I've got a couple of recipes that I think they'll take to (ossobucco will probably be a hit, although not entirely sure about a Risotto Milanese accompaniment, and goulash and stuffed chicken spring to mind), and when I look through the stacks of Delicious and Good Food magazines that my mum gives me, I'm spotting more and more recipes that would qualify as "Dinner for Four."  I know there will still be times when all they'll want for their tea is fish fingers, chips and peas, but that offers me and Doug the opportunity to have something like a hot curry that they're years off enjoying yet.  And I know that there will be things that they'll never like, no matter what, but it is satisfying to get to the point where they're enjoying *and* appreciating freshly cooked and prepared food that is out of their normal comfort zone.

Dyspraxia

We've wondered for a while now whether Sam had dyspraxia; he's as bright as a button, but anything requiring co-ordination and focus can be a challenge.  He's an absolute whizz on his scooter because he only needs to push it along with one foot and steering on a micro-scooter just requires pressure on the handlebars - but put him on a bike and the combination of balancing, moving the pedals *and* moving the handlebars to steer is too much for him.  Likewise, learning to swim is proving to be a very slow process - some days when he's in the zone with concentration and focus, he does really well, but on a day when he's tired or his hay fever is playing up, it looks like he's got lead weights on his legs as he ploughs across the pool.

As parents, we had observed this without too much concern and a certain amount of amusement - Sam is totally adorable in his clumsy endeavours.  However, last March his teacher raised concerns about his handwriting and his inability to hold his pencil in the requisite pincer grip, and I decided that perhaps we should be more proactive about the whole situation.  I read an article on teaching dyspraxic children and it rang so many bells, it was as if a group of campanologists had taken up residence in the house.

Sam doesn't have all the symptoms listed in the article by any means, and as he's in the gifted group at school for literacy and numeracy, there are no worries educationally.  But if there's one thing I've learned from getting his verbal dyspraxic diagnosed and treated, it's that you have to be the prime mover in getting things done, that you can't expect anyone else to do it for you.  His teacher and the SNC at school seemed a little taken aback that I was going to get a medical opinion, but I see no advantage in dealing with this any other way.

And so, last week, to the Paediatrics Consultants at the hospital.  Who were brilliant.  Sam did the whole series of tests that he did as a 3 year old when his speech problems were diagnosed, and he did them perfectly with a sly sense of humour that obviously delighted and amused the medical staff.  Developmentally, he's fine (which we knew) and there's no neurological problems that they could discover, but they watched him write his name and examined how he held a pencil.  They agreed with the teacher that this is going to prove a problem, that he won't be able to write quickly, neatly or form smaller letters if he continues to hold then pencil in that way.  The fact that his hand hurts when he holds it with a pincer grip for longer than a few seconds is also a problem.

The next steps are for observation - both on our part and on the part of Sam's new teacher in Year 2.  There is then a questionnaire for us both to complete and send off to the Occupational Therapy department for evaluation.  The best outcome for us would be for him to receive OT help with his handwriting whilst in school - I'm perfectly happy to do work with him at home, but having this done by a proper professional in the school setting would be ideal.

This is all very positive stuff.  We haven't been sent away with nothing or dismissed as worriers (which I think the school were inclined to do, to be honest), and any help we can get will be a massive bonus.  In situations like this, the NHS comes into its own, without a shadow of a doubt  - can you imagine trying to do this in a country where you need health insurance just to see a GP?

Summer Holidays

The summer holidays are here.  The past school year seems to have simply flown by and it doesn't seem possible that the long break is upon us once more.

I always slightly dread the summer holidays, to be honest; I like the fact that we don't have the daily mad rush to get to school and that my day isn't determined by school pick up times, but at the same time it is very daunting to have a whole six weeks stretching out in front of us with nothing in them.

Usually we go away for our family holiday in the summer break - I accept the higher prices as a trade off for breaking up the six weeks with a fortnight in the sun.  But not this year.  We decided to stay-cation and do some camping, which is quite possibly the worst decision ever, considering how bad the weather has been.  After the first three days of the hols were beautiful we looked at campsites for next weekend only to find that the wet weather is forecast to return with a vengeance.

So far, I've managed to arrange one thing to do every weekday of the holidays for the first fortnight - and thanks to the Council and School, these things have been either free or subsidised.  We have a trip to watch the Olympic football at the beginning of August and then I'm taking the boys to stay with my parents for a few days.  And then...... nothing. The free school/council-arranged activities peter out and we shall be left to our own devices.

Obviously, there is always the library, the swimming pool, the parks, the soft play areas and the stately homes with their large gardens.  And I'm sure we'll do the lot, many times over.   In the meanwhile, let me just have a look at last minute deals for a fortnight in Menorca.......

Sports Day

At the beginning of the week, the weather forecast was so dreadful it looked like neither of the boys' sports days were going to take place.  As it was, the weather gods smiled on them, and they both went ahead.

Not so much fun for the parents, alas.  The Infants sports day is pretty tedious - they take a very long time to get all the kids to do their running races, followed by skipping or egg and spoon, and then an obstacle course or sack race.  It takes hours, even when they have separate sessions for Reception/Nursery and Years 1 and 2.  Last year I was unfortunate enough to have to sit through both sessions.

It wasn't too bad this time - Jacob had a doctors appointment and was then told not to go into school that day, so we missed Sam's running race, but did see him compete in the skipping race.  He was last by a country mile.  We're pretty sure that Sam is dyspraxic, so anything requiring the co-ordination needed for skipping is a bit too much to ask of him.  That said, bless him, he persevered and skipped all along the course - if extremely slowly and badly.

At this point, Jacob decided he was bored, so we didn't stay to watch the obstacle race - it was going to take about 45 minutes to get round to Sam's group - so we went home.

The Juniors Sport day was much better organised.  Rather than taking it in turns for small groups to compete and everyone watch, they competed in their classes where they were divided into school houses.  They moved from area to area, doing a race or activity, and the parents moved with them.  It was v well organised, and the kids didn't get bored at all.

Jacob was always a bit rubbish at sports day at the Infants, but he seems to have blossomed at Juniors.  He was last in the 100m out of his class, but he didn't care and, more importantly, had a good time running.  He was great at things like skipping and the sack race and because each race only had a small number of observers, it wasn't quite so intimidating as the Infants races with the entire crowd watching everyone.

I'll give Junior Sports Day the thumbs up and be genuinely disappointed if it gets cancelled for bad weather in future years.

World Book Day

Jacob's school celebrated World Book Day by inviting all the kids to go dressed up as their favourite character from a book.  Now, what this normally means is that the kids just turn up dressed in whatever fancy dress they have at home and so you get loads of film and tv characters, footballers etc, and not many actual book characters.

So I was really pleased when Jacob announced he wanted to be Asterix.  He adores Asterix; in fact we've pretty much exhausted York Library's supply of them!

Here he is in all his Gaulish Glory:-

Sam is Six!

Or should I say, Samuel is six.  Samuel is the name I put down on his registration forms at school, and Samuel is the name by which his teachers call him.  If you ask him what he is called, he says Samuel.  At the Lego Discovery Centre on Saturday, he couldn't find us when he left the soft play area and went up to a member of staff and said "Hello, I'm Samuel and I'm lost".  No one in the family calls him Samuel at all, not even in anger; Samwell and Samwise, but never Samuel.

Anyway, Samuel is six.  He arrived in the world three weeks early, delivered by emergency C section, and spent the first 19 days of his life in the Neo Natal Unit at Kings College Hospital suffering from very low blood sugar levels.  But he thrived and was soon on the 91st growth centile for both weight and height, and he's now almost as tall as his older brother.

The main problem we had with Sam was his lack of speech.  We still have no idea what it was that stopped him from speaking his first words until the age of 3 ½; the paediatrician said Verbal Dyspraxia, but the Speech Therapist disagreed.  Once he'd said his first words, there was no stopping him; he acquired language in the space of the summer holidays, astounding nursery staff and health professionals in the process.

And once he started school, he began to astound me.  I always worried about Sam because a) he's my child b) we spent a long time being told by health professionals that slow speech development could point to learning difficulties and c) he spends most of his time away with the fairies. So I wasn't really expecting great things from him.  But waddya know?  The boy's a smarty pants.

His teacher, Miss Courtis, summed him up very nicely when she told us at parents' evening: "We have to send Samuel round to the year two corridor to get his reading books.  And then we have to send someone to fetch him because he's forgotten why he's round there."

Happy Birthday Samuel.

Shoes

Back in August, my mum bought the boys their school shoes for the coming term.  A pair of Clarks for Jacob, some Startrites for Sam.  Not much change out of £80, which is why I'm glad she buys them.

On Wednesday, I noticed that Jacob's shoes had split - one piece of leather had come out of it's stitching all the way down the side of the shoe.  The other shoe was starting to go in exactly the same place. That's not very good, imo - £36 shoes lasting less than five months; Jacob isn't particularly hard on  his shoes and apart from the split, they looked to be in pretty good condition.

The most irritating thing about this is that when we got him trainers in November, he'd already gone up a half size from August and will have grown more since then.  If only his feet had stayed the same size I could have gone into Clarks in a state of high dudgeon and got a replacement pair - I'm not sure they're going to be quite so accommodating if he actually needs them in a bigger size....

Bedtime Reading

We're great ones for routine in this house.  Ever since the kids were babies, we've had the same bedtime routine of bath, drink of milk, story, bed - although nowadays, I don't have to sing them to sleep (thankfully) - and we only deviate from the norm when we're on our hols.  And as a rule, they go to sleep fairly soon after that - around 8ish.  Only occasionally do they have nights when they can't settle and we still hear them mucking around upstairs after 8.30pm.

However, just lately, the routine has become disrupted.  For a while now, Jacob has preferred to read his own bedtime story; because he doesn't like being on his own upstairs, this still takes place in the same location where Sam is having a story read to him.  Occasionally, he'll curl up and listen to the story, but mostly he prefers to read something of his own.

Sam, for the most part, has been happy to be read to, apart from when he's going through his "tablet phases", where he wants to "listen" to an interactive story on the tablet - we have quite a lot of these, mostly Doctor Seuss stories, and as he is a whizz on the tablet, we aren't required to sit with him while he listens.  But he too is starting to want to read by himself - probably because he very much wants to be like his big brother.

Slowly the bedtime routine is being eroded.  And eroded further still by the fact that something has gone wrong with the mixer tap in the bath, reducing the hot water flow to a trickle - quelle horreur, no bath!!  They've been having showers, instead, and I get the feeling that they're really enjoying this as it gives them much more time to read later.

So the only thing remaining from the routine of 7 years is the warm milk drink.  This is one thing that they don't seem to want to do without, even in the summer.  And I'm strangely hopeful that it continues, even if it feels like something a character in the Secret Seven would do......

Stranger Danger part 2

And so it turns out there is rather more Stranger Danger in the area than we'd anticipated - both schools sent out warnings yesterday that a black car with two men had been seen in the area, trying to entice young girls into their car. 

Its a good sign that the girls in question were sensible enough to refuse and then report it, although I can't imagine that having tried their luck and failed, the men in the car would be stupid enough to stay in the same area.

Stranger Danger

On return to school this week we received a letter via the Juniors telling us that the police have warned them about reports of "suspicious cars" parked in the vicinity of the school during opening time.

My first reaction to this was that, in all probability, the suspicion was entirely in the minds of the people that reported the cars to the police and that it was just a couple of dads sitting in their cars after dropping their kids off, answering their text messages before heading off to work.  Something innocent like that.

But what if.....  The trouble is that no-one wants to be in the McCann situation where not only have they had their child abducted, they'd left said child asleep alone in the room, thus allowing the ease of her abduction.  No one wants to be the parent that plays the (extremely long) odds of child abduction and loses.

Typically, all this co-incides with me giving Jacob a little bit of independence in his walk to school.  Since he started Juniors, once we get to the school grounds he hares off down the service road leaving me and Sam to trail behind him carrying his bags; we normally arrive at the Juniors playground in time to hand him his bags before he goes in to school and we then turn round and walk back down the service road to the Infants.  So I asked him if he would like to walk down the service road to school by himself.  And yes he would, thank you.

I've had varying reactions from the parents of his peers; surprise, slight disapproval, real disapproval but also quite a lot of "hmm, not a bad idea".  My next door neighbour is quite keen for her boy to do this, so we're wondering if we can actually get our shit together and arrive at the school grounds at the same time, thus allowing Jacob and Oliver to walk round to school together.

But I think it's probably time for a Stranger Danger conversation with Jacob.  I'm going to have to give it quite a lot of thought before I do it, because it's a fine line to walk - particularly as, statistically speaking, it's more likely to be Not a Stranger Danger.  It's worth noting that the only known paedophile in this area turned out to be the Deputy Headmaster at the Junior School....

Halfway through Half Term

We normally decamp to my Mum's for October half term, but as the puppy isn't still out of her vaccination quarantine we'd have been severely limited as to what we could have done there.  Plus, Mum doesn't have an enclosed back garden.  So, stay at home and see what York has to offer.

February half term is usually Viking Week, with shed loads of viking-related stuff going on around the City.  October half term dovetails nicely with Halloween, so the libraries have been doing Spooky Storytimes; ditto the Castle Museum with its gruesome stories for older children taking place in one of the cells of the old prison.  The kids have been to Castle quite a few times already, but the Victorian Street is always a winner.

Today we made some illuminated letters in the Yorkshire Museum and spent a long time playing with the magnetic mosaic boards in their learning rooms.  ("Mum, look! we've made a roman mosaic of Perry the Platypus!").  We're heading back there tomorrow for Astronomy Day - modelling stars and planets, a tour of the observatory in the Museum Gardens and getting hands on with the observatory telescope; unfortunately, it's going to be a cloudy day - we had been planning to take them to the evening session where they can look through the telescope at the heavens, but probably not worth it now.

Also planned for the weekend is the obligatory visit to the NRM - ever popular with the kids but the museum is so vast I need Doug to help me keep an eye on them.  Oh, and Jacob and Doug are going to see Tintin at some point, which means I'll have to take Sam to see something more appropriate for him - The Smurfs, probably.  I wonder if I can fob him off with a trip to Morrisons?  it seems to work in the advert.....

School Rules

Jacob's new school is a school of rules; most of these rules start with DO NOT.  Now I know that schools are home to the arbitrary rule - from the narrow strictures of what can be worn as uniform to whether you can whistle in the corridors or take crisps in with your lunch.  At my school, girls were briefly banned from wearing ankle socks on the grounds that it made them look like sluts.

At Jacob's school on Friday he was told he couldn't ride his bike nor Sam scoot his scooter along the largely car-free access road between the Juniors and Infants.   It's possibly the safest road in the area, hardly the M1 on a Monday morning.

My reaction on having this rule explained to me as being "for everyone's safety" (general WTF-age, followed by irritation, derision and truculence) made me think - and not just about the fuckwittery that seems to infect the leadership of Junior School.

If you think about it, the arbitrary rule goes out of your life around the time you leave school.  When you get to Uni, there are deadlines to be met and expectations about your attendance; when you start work, you encounter the seemingly arbitrary rules of our Health & Safety culture, but only rarely are you told that you cannot do something for no good reason.  I guess this is probably because you're an adult, with an adult's reasoning powers - if someone presented you with an arbitrary rule, you could probably defeat them with the sheer power of your contempt.

Doing a training course as a post-grad in a college that also taught 16 year olds, I was ordered out of a lift by a tutor as the rule was that they weren't to be used by students; I told her that I hadn't got an upper second degree in English and Medieval History to be ordered around by someone who was teaching an HND course in hairdressing.  You see?  contempt, arrogance (and considerable pomposity) defeat the arbitrary rule in a Scott Pilgrim-stylee battle where the tutor explodes in a puff of smoke and I get 548 XP (as well as a ride to the 9th floor in the lift).

But then you become a parent and your kids go to school - and once again, sooner or later, you are exposed to the arbitrary rule.  If my reaction on Friday afternoon was anything to go by, there needs to be Family Learning courses available to all parents to enable them to deal with these rules in ways that don't involve being utterly contemptuous of the people responsible for your children's education.

Perhaps I'll suggest it as a future course to the people from the local council.  And in future, on being told that my children have to stand completely still in the playground for the 10 minutes of breaktime, "for everyone's safety", I'll be able to smile brightly and say "right you are!" without blinking an eye.

Christmas

I can't believe I'm thinking of this already!

As the temperature heads up towards the mid 20s, I've been contemplating buying the dried fruit necessary to make christmas cakes and puddings, and on Sunday I ordered this:-

I wasn't actually planning to buy it just yet but had one of those panic moments where I envisaged leaving it until my Amazon shopping basket until mid-November and then suddenly discovering I couldn't get it anywhere for love or money.  So I bought it.

My only beef with it is that while Jacob will adore this, Sam would much prefer a Lego City one.  But at that price, it's not going to happen!

Cuisenaire Rods

I've started using these when we practice Jacob's number bonds - they provide a visual accompaniment to basic arithmetic - and they're already making numeracy homework a lot less stressful.

Homework

I can't ever remember getting homework at Primary School.  I'm fairly certain this isn't my memory playing tricks with me because I can remember the thrill of getting my first homework on day one at Grammar School (it was French and I got 8 out of 12 - probably the only time I ever got a decent mark in French homework).  I also remember having to trace a map of Mesopotamia into my history exercise book - I didn't know how to use tracing paper to do this so drew it free-hand, and the history teacher didn't spot the difference.  Feel free to now boggle at just how freaky my memory is.


But I digress.

My children are in Primary School and they have homework on a regular basis.  In Sam's case (he is 5), he has a couple of new readers most days, plus a work sheet (usually numeracy) to complete over the week.  Jacob's new school recommends that parents spend 10 minutes every night listening to their children read their readers and 10 minutes on their times tables as well as the weekly numeracy homework tasks and spellings to be learned for a test on the Friday.  It may not sound like an awful lot, but factor in that they also have swimming lessons, aikido, choir and Anchor Boys after school during the week, and their bedtime routine starts at c. 7pm every night.


I'm starting to wonder when they'll find time to play.....

Opticians

Both Doug and I are short-sighted.  I'm - 8 in both eyes (that's the technical term for blind as a bat) and started wearing glasses at age 7.  So when Jacob announced that he was having difficulty seeing things from a distance, we both feared that son #1 had inherited our rubbish eyesight.

Two trips to the Opticians later, what we've realised is that Jacob just fancied getting a pair of glasses - there's nothing wrong with his eyesight at present.  So, a little irritated with him for lying to us, but relieved that he's ok for now.

Here he is with weirdly assymetrical pupils as the effects of the eyedrops that the Optician put in start to wear off:-

White Belt!

Jacob had his first grading in Aikido last week and we found out this week that he passed!  He's is now a white belt - 6 Kyu 1 Mon, to be precise.

Swimming

We've had mixed success with swimming lessons over the past couple of years.  We've been going to lessons in the Junior School pool that is five minutes/15 minutes walk from where we live - all wonderfully convenient.  The small snag is that they teach breaststroke, pretty much to the exclusion of every other stroke until Level 4, and try as he might, Jacob just can't do that stroke.

He is perfectly confident in the water -  he'll jump in, go underwater, swim on his back, go down water slides etc without any problem at all.  If he doesn't attempt to do any particular stroke, he can swim some way (unaided) on his front and further on his back, but watching his attempt to do the breaststroke is a painful experience.  It's all very well saying that it's the survival stroke, but if you can't swim it, it's not much cop as a survival tool.

Finally, after being handed the slip of paper from the instructor saying that Jacob would be in Level 2 again this term, I'd had enough.  Time to go further afield and stop being seduced by the sheer convenience of swimming lessons just down the road.  So, starting yesterday, we had swimming lessons at the aqua park just to the north of York - a five mile drive on the ring road in the rush hour, slightly more expensive lessons, but hopefully a good investment.

My initial impressons are positive - the pool is bigger, they can learn proper water entry and jumping/diving as well as swimming.  The floor of the pool is adjustable so it can be raised and lowered to the appropriate level for the classes, the teacher made an initial impresson on Jacob and he was really trying hard to demonstrate his abilities, and most importantly - they don't teach breaststroke until the kids can actually swim.

Sam's lesson was less impressive - they were down by one teacher due to a hospital emergency, so there was just one teacher to try and look after 10 small kids.  Watching Sam swim with floats is like watching someone have an epileptic fit.  But next week, he'll be in a group of five with a teacher to pay more attention to him, so I'm hopeful he'll be making progress soon.

Fingers crossed.

Back to School

I think sometimes that I'm more excited about the kids going back to school than they are. I like the structure that a new school term brings, the start up of after-school activities like swimming and Anchor Boys; I'm ludicrously excited about them getting new year planners and homework books, and letters from school informing us of what they'll be doing this term.

I loved the first morning of school term when, after six weeks of wearing shorts and crocs, they donned their uniforms and new school shoes - they look so smart! And then in the time it took us to walk to school, Sam's new shoes were scuffed and dirty and he'd got grass stains on one knee of his trousers :)

This time, Jacob has a new school - we have the relatively unusual situation where the Infant and Junior schools are separate; two different head teachers and different buildings (separated by a fairly large playing field) although, thankfully, the same uniform. We're not quite into the swing of things yet - our drop off/pick up routine has changed somewhat, and the Infants playground is full of mothers in the same boat muttering how they can't get their heads round having to commute between Juniors and Infants. Jacob hasn't really been forthcoming about how he's finding it, and as yet he hasn't brought home any readers or spellings books, so I'm not sure yet what is expected of him (us!) this year.

Sam is delighted to be in Year 1 - he hasn't bemoaned the lack of playing time that accompanies the shift from Reception, and seems most happy to be back at school. I'm waiting to see what readers they send him home with - he had just started on Level 5 (Green) before the summer holidays, so unsure whether his new teacher will just carry on with those or do her own assessment of reading abilities before handing out any new readers.

And the boys have their swimming lessons tonight - a new swim school and a new venue, so a bit nervous how this is going to work out. After two and a bit years of going local with very little to show for it, I'm making a bit more of an effort and taking them to lessons at Waterworld at Monks Cross - hopefully, they'll make some progress and make the slog round the ring-road in rush hour worthwhile :)