Curriculum meeting

General 

Elliott was really good after school today and even let me put vaseline on his lips as long as I put some on mine. His lips were quite sore today though, but he didn't seem affected. 

Activities

Before I picked him up from School I went to the meeting about curriculum. This was quite interesting. They started by explaining the aims of the F2 year (and F1 because there were F1 parents there as well). This is all very similar to Monkey Puzzle, but hopefully they'll put the slides up on the website - http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=245849. Then they gave a few tips and also talked about the website above, which they don't like using much but does have some information on there so worth looking at. They are going to let us know a login for the extra information available so if you get those details be good to know it. The most interesting tips and information from the session I thought were:

• When actions are being used and especially bad actions to communicate (hitting, etc) the teachers use the phrase "use your words" to encourage verbal communication
• Encouraging clearing up is good even if they don't complete the task (think you already do this, I try!)
• When reading pictures are more important than words so they can link visual recognition of words to pictures - encouraging him to tell the story from the pictures and then reading the words helps put words into context
• Encouraging independence in all activities is good (again think you already do this, I try!)
• The squiggly hand writing templates are called "cursive" handwriting and make it easier for them to learn how to do joined up writing quicker apparently
• There's a whole new way of saying letters (see video on website)
• They'll be releasing a time-table of what goes on during school day soon, and a calendar of the topics they're focusing on - if you get hold of this I'd be very grateful if I can get a copy
• There will be parents evenings in October - but you can talk to teachers, though end of day is better time to approach them
• The website is good to look at though hard for them to use 

Anyway it was good to go to and I hope they get the slides for actual curriculum detail up on the website. After the session we went to Asda to shop for a birthday present and card for you which was funny as he was convinced you'd want either toys he liked (Octonauts, etc) or girl toys (Barbie, etc). Then we got home and he changed out of school clothes really well. Then we basically just played with the "laptops" and some cars, had tea, bath and bedtime.