Made it!

The last couple of weeks were fairly tough in some ways, particularly getting up in the morning, but there were also some really positive things and M has made it to the end of term!  She played her French horn in the band for a pensioners Christmas party, followed by a carol service. The following week the band also played as part of the school Christmas show, which was a modern school-based take on A Christmas Carol, which was very entertaining.  As a result of these things, she missed a few days of lessons, which caused some stress when doing the homework which had been set.  Since nowadays homework is generally set online, it doesn't seem to be a case of not doing it if you miss the lesson.  On those occasions she has had a go, but been stressed as she's not been completely sure what she was supposed to do, however each time I've suggested she take what she's done in, show it to the teacher and ask if she's got the right idea and it's been fine.

Insisting that M needed to stick with school until Christmas in order to give it a good go has, I think, proved to be the right thing to do.  After a horrible few weeks to start with, when M was really unhappy and would have given up every day after the first one if we'd let her, she has settled in pretty well.  She definitely doesn't love school, but there are parts of it that she really does enjoy.  I'm quite chuffed that she seems to have got over her initial extreme dislike of maths and quite likes that now, although she really doesn't like English much.  She is really rather put out by what they have been told will be happening after Christmas, which is being given a reading book which is considered the 'right level' for them.  I'm not sure whether they will be able to chose their own from within the 'correct' range or be given a specific book, but I must admit I'm not particularly impressed either.

Another thing that I am really not impressed with is that children with 100% attendance (of which M is one) were 'rewarded' with a pack of chocolate bars, since basically that's punishing children for being ill.

So having made it to Christmas, I did ask M if she was planning on going back to school after the holiday.  She told me that at the moment she's 50/50 about that and would let me know the day before school starts back!  I wasn't very happy with that, so have given her until the new year to make up her mind.  It's not so much needing to know if she's going back, as needing to know if she's not, as that will take more organising.  I think that she probably will go back and see the year out, although we'll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, K's still quietly getting on with things.  She's now at 77% of 6th grade maths completed on Khan Academy and last week she finally posted the assignment for unit two of her English course. I didn't make a note of when she started this unit, but I think it's taken at least 5-6 weeks, which is considerably longer than we talked about it being likely to take when she started it.  After spending rather a long time thinking about and planning the short story that was the final assignment and then taking half an hour or more to write a few lines each day, she then found that she needed to research things as she went along.  The story involved a journey and she wanted to make sure that what she had written was sensible, given she had used real places.  With encouragement, she did get a bit better at getting a more done in a session, but even so it was a question of about a third of a side of an A5 sheet of paper at a time, but at least that is an improvement.

In other news, it's nearly Christmas!  Both girls have made some cards, K a few quilled ones and M more that she's drawn Christmassy pictures on.  We went to friends' Christmas party last weekend, where as is traditional the children disappeared upstairs, planned, practised and then came downstairs to perform a nativity play.  This year M was a sheep, K was the shepherd and Joseph was played by a broom in a coat and hat. There are some more bits and pieces to finish off, but I think we're nearly there.  Merry Christmas!