First term of school

I can't believe how fast the first term of school went. This blog entry was changed from first week of school to first month then the fist term of school!



The few weeks leading to Lara's start at 'big' school were busy days. Not only was I trying to get everything ready (uniforms, shoes, socks, school bags, swimming gear, lunch boxes to name a few - there were a lot of things to buy!), I also planned special activities for Lara, we went swimming and skating, went to the beach, had playdates and watched 'The Muppets'. Lara was very excited with the prospect of going to school 'every day'.

Lara's first day at school was smooth and uneventful. We had our cameras and took a couple of quick pics but as advised we didn't make a big deal of it. We left Lara as soon as she settled in the classroom. It was good as there was no time for Lara or us to get too sentimental. Getting upset or emotional would not help Lara or us in this situation.

Lara made some new friends and seemed to take this new school thing matter-of-factly. She loved school and complained about school being too short. The first couple of weeks of school was perfect. Then she got sick, vomiting, temperature and had to stay home for 3 days. After that it was complaint of tummy aches. To cut a long story short, the recurren tummy aches, we found later, was due to not drinking enough water (apparently very common in school kids) not bullying as I suspected.

Swimming classes started at week 2 and homework at week 5. There were readers to read every night and sight words to revise (when I remember). My life was extremely busy with class funcitons, playdates and plays-in-the-park, pencil-shapening and literacy volunteering. There are special days to remember (Harmony days all kids wore orange, healthy-lunch-day $5 but no lunch etc), lost properties to find (Lara seemed to lose at least one item of clothing every week), and so many notes going back and forth. I felt like I have two part-time jobs!

Even though I am busy with work at the moment, I'm very happy about this short break called school holiday! Somehow I managed to volunteer to do more reading and pencil-sharpening next term!! Hopefully things run smoothly next term.