Three meetings

We were down at the school this evening for Parents' Night, with an increasingly difficult rota of appointments to attend now that Rowan has entered the system.

First up, Mrs. Urquhart, who is very pleased with Sean's work; his reading and maths being excellent. He still seems to be getting on well with most of his classmates and they've all been enjoying the Egypt project. The only thing, and we've noticed it too, is Sean's untidiness in his presentation, mainly caused by him rushing to finish first, which also makes for careless errors. Finn is a neater writer than Sean when Sean takes a slapdash approach so Sean needs to be aware of that and work more on his joined-up writing. He doesn't seem to be doing as much creative writing now and his reading, while still prolific, could maybe be more challenging (my view!). Sean still seems to rate books by the number of pages he can read and how quickly he can read them rather than whether he finds them entertaining. His recall and interpretation is very good however, and his imagination is still very active as we can see when he leads the play with Finn and Rowan. He's also been scared to go into his bed on his own of late being troubled by images of vampires in his head and has taken to sitting listening to stories with Finn and Rowan once more.

Rowan has settled in right away at pre-school and is widening his circle of playmates beyond Duncan. He has been noted as very chatty (no!) but is good at doing what is asked of him (he listens?) although he "can be easily led" by some of the more mischevious elements. No surprise there, but he actually will stop doing whatever he shouldn't be doing when told. If only that would translate to the house. All in all he seems to be enjoying himself.

We had a good look at Finn's work before and after our meeting regarding Rowan. His writing has come on a lot and we know from recent homework that his reading has really taken off in the last few weeks to the extent that Mrs. Henry is moving him up to join Aimee in the top reading group. She was delighted with Finn ("if only every child was as nice as Finn") due to the way he works hard and eschews the boisterous behaviour that a lot of the boys in his class seem to participate in. His confidence has improved over the course of P1 but he is still viewed as quiet (not in our house!).

It's always great to see examples of the boys' work as the homework is usually one-dimensional (reading or straight worksheets) and it's in class they do more creative or scientific subjects. Finn was out and about doing mapping with his class and they had put together some little books for World Book Day based on the ensemble of characters that each table had come dressed as. Sean's class had their Egypt work freshly posted on the walls. Sharon and I had helped him complete his poster (his subject was mummification) over the weekend although his attitude to homework can be rather lackadaisical.

All in all, a very good set of reports from our fine sons!