Scruffy Mummy

Tomorrow 9:15am is the next open day.

Not anymore - if you check out the lastest admission policy, it explicitly states that 15% of applicants will be those who are awarded music/sports scholarships. Applicable to the next lot of entrants for 2013.

Dear Eco79, They did not use or win the appeal about Charter School using the Greendale Route. They won on Wanley Road - a perfectly safe short road which runs from the bottom of the Champion Hill Estate. I was curious about the route so I found it and it is about 10 adult paces along

Personally, If I wanted my child to learn a second language, I would want it to be Mandarian or Japanese. I too went to school in Canadian where we were offered the chance to take French and French Geography (geography taught in French). I know have neither a good grasp of either French or Geography!

I'm the tech savvy pro in our household - mr. scruffy bows to my superior wisdom in in this regard. I once had a paniced phone call while I was away on a cours about why he couldn't access his email. Talked him through the various solutions (turn router on & off, etc. etc) and eventually helped him discover the problem. He is more stotic with the 'yuck' duties (i.e. fox poo in garden) however.

There is a bend in the road by the school if cars are coming towards lordship lane and if a car or motorbike is speeding along it is possible to check and nothing is coming and then if they do not slow down it can take one by surprise. I know a couple people who have had this experience at this particular crossing.

Yes we did have the green man showing and the reason we weren't mown down is I looked & stopped children after we started across when I saw he wasn't slowing down and even appeared to be speeding up.

Really dangerous behaviour PARTICULARLY as at 3:45pm there are people with children crossing that road at those lights - I and my children were already on the crossing as the light was red and we had the right of way. It was lucky that we hadn't gotton so far across. And many apologies to the innocent bicylist who happened along afterwards when the lights switched to green - my children had a delayed reaction when we reached the other side of the pavement and were shouting at the motorbike driver who was by then way ahead of you - not at you!

Oh yes GillandJoe. Thumbs up - you are spot on.

Jags Sports Centre runs football, multi-sports and now art/crafts. Our 7 year old has been going for two years to the football academy every break and loves it. Very well run. It runs from 9-3:30pm which suits us well as we are self employed and can pick up at 3:30pm.

Ooh.. My toddler just adored organic goose liver p?t? and cavier on hand ground quinoa crackers. Simply divine!

Tuesdays, 5-6pm, Goose Green centre there is a great street dance class run by Get Dan 'n Dance. My 7 year old goes and lOves it!

TClasses run by individual self employed people will be priced at a higher rate because the people running those groups have to cover all the associated costs such as venue hire and publicity. Once a class gets a good reputation, it will get packed out - I remember taking my son to the popular Tickle Shop a few years ago and I can imagine that it's more difficult to run bigger groups. So having slighly higher prices - 2 or 3 pounds more might help keep numbers down while still enabling group organizers to earn an income. Anyway, as someone who is self employed I sympathize with the people who run the groups and their pricing structure because when you are self employed what you earn for that 1hour of your activity has to cover you for all the work it takes to provide the activity. I think a solution could be to find one class you are happy to pay more for and committ to that and then do a range of other activities such as things run by childrens centers which are state subsidized. (libraries run popular free activities as does the hornimann) Or i know myself that it's more than easy to spend &8 for lunch out so maybe you could replace something u do like that in the week?

And there is always the problem of schools 'resting on their laurels'. A school rated good or outstanding a few years ago might having been slipping over those years. A school rated satisfactory might actually be striving and get a good or outstanding at the next visit which means children over the years it's been striving have benefitted. Another point is that under the new Ofsted framework that was effective since jan 2012 it is more difficult to achieve outstanding and good.

At most primary schools pupils need to use the schools own book bag. This may be an exception at bessessmer but I woukd think this unlikely.

It's probably best to wait to schools are open and ring them - I doubt there will be tours scheduled in the 1st two weeks of September in any case. The schools set their own tour arrangements and it varies greatly from school to school. Most school tours I think start at 9:15am so you shouldn't have to book a whole day off. The GG school tour lasts about 50 mins followed by coffee & chat with current parents. So you should be able to get away by 10:15 if needed.

Get a longboard. These are wider, longer boards used for 'cruising' and are therefore more stable. We got my son one of these when he was five (after spotting another five year old at the rye with one) and it was great. We found those mini boards really hard for him.

Definately agree that you need to re-negoitate your pay. As a broad rule of thumb, I would suggest you ask for 25% more to cover your tax, then holidays which I would guess would be 10% and then 5 - 10% contingency (i.e. child sick, your sickness, etc). I always remember the advice someone once gave me that if you start high when you set your fee, you can always go down! But if you start too low, you can never go up! (No one will ever go 'Hey, you are charging too low a rate - let's pay you more!') But if you put in a fee which is too high for them, they will let you know and you can negiotate. If you go in with a figure too low and then find that effectively you earning way less than employees, then you are stuck. If you are freelance, you should be able to leave without worry if you find another job. The problem with getting a mortgage is that you need 3 years accounts before getting a mortgage as a self-employed person. I think they are pretty strict on this - once you have this, it should be fine.

It would be a good example to your daughter if you felt aggrieved about the letter to arrange a meeting with the Head and have a meeting where you assertively discuss the matter in person with him or her. Seeking support on a public Internet forum while gratifying in the short term doesn't feel like the best or most mature solution to a real life communication problem. I find it sad that this HT committment to their faith is being questioned due to a slightly misworded sentence. While you have rightly blocked out names and the school, ED is a very small world. Personally, I think it sounds like the HT is concerned for your child's social & emotional education - a large part of primary education is about this. And in year 6 a child feeling isolated from her peers for one of the last weeks in her primary school & leaving without a positive shared group experience in favour of studying for Kumon exams sounds very sad to me. However, we all have very different expectations of education and regardless of any of that, if you feel you have been treated rudely or unfairly you should go straight to the source and discuss your concerns with the person in an open and direct manner.

I too was a very slack and rather dis-interested teenage babysitter. I remember once I lost a regular babysitting job because I didn't do anything with the kids except watch TV all day on a Saturday. I don't know what I was thinking! I wasn't very clued into the kids I was looking after and too much in my own world I think! I use a 15 year teenage babysitter now occassionally - mainly at night after my son is in bed but sometimes in the daytime for short periods. My 7 year old thinks she is very cool and for those times we have used her in the daytimes she will go out with him to the park and draw with him at home. My feeling is if they are 17 or under, untill you know them & how they will be it's best to not leave them too long in the daytime - with my teenage babysitter we had a few trial runs with us in the house and at the park with her and my son to see how she got on and to suggest activities and things to do etc. etc. HOWEVER, if the babysitter is 20 or over, I think should be mature enough to sort out activities in the daytime and do some entertaining! I also use babysitter in her twenties and she is lively and fun and reads and does all sorts of fun things with my boy who is completely charmed by her.

Jags multi-sport & football academy are running as my son is booked on all 3 days.

I agree. It is dangerous the way cars speed along rarely stoping for pedestrians at the zebra crossing.

Virgin Media is terrible. A friend was left without a landline AND broadband for a month - they were impossible to connect and then when they were finally allocated an appointment it would be cancelled on the day via text message. Really poor service. BTW I love Zen Internet & broadband too - great customer service, very helpful.

I have a lively little boy & although his energy can be tiring, I enjoy that lively energy that he has. He also has a number of girl friends and classmates who are possessed of similiar lively energy! I think we can all be guilty of being disdainful of behaviour we are not familiar with. Personally I find myself rolling my eyes when I am with a quiet child who uses quiet whinging to get attention - that low level hum of whingyness that I find those quiet girls and boys tend to is far more annoying for me than a loud, exhurberent child who clearly states what they want. And looking at the adult world, while being quiet, sitting still & obdient is seen as 'good' in school/by adults, those are not generally skills that are seen as valuable in the world of work! However, introverts have been shown to have alot of important and much needed skills in the world which can be overlooked in the adult world of work which tends to value the extrovert more. Also I notice the girls in my sons class have already developed more complex cliques and social networks in which hierarchies are established which brings back my own memories of feeling excluded and unpopular. Whereas the boys just seem to get on with it - although of course they have best friends and groups they will also just get on and seem more willing to play with whom ever is around.

This is an interesting article which might help with your worries about becoming obsessed by it all! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/letting-go-well-being_n_1453089.html