Dunlabellin

All labels now sewn in/ironed on/written on. What do you mean, I have to do this again next year, if not before? Unfortunately my reel of white cotton is missing in action, so the final label (painting apron) is sewn in with black cotton when white would have looked better, but no great disaster. I just hope that no buttons fall off white polo shirts ...

Have managed to politely answer Husband's query as to had I not thought of just writing on the labels already in the clothes without poking him in the eye with a needle.

I've been thinking that we're pretty lucky with the uniform in some respects. There are only two school-specific items available - jumper/cardigan, and tie. A lot of other schools seem to include logoed polo shirts and PE kit, and other things. I believe at primary level schools can't make uniform compulsory at all, let alone specific items, but of course where there is a uniform there is pressure to wear it, and where there are particular items, there is pressure to wear them.

I rather think state schools (primary and secondary) should only be allowed to stipulate certain items (tie, and jumper/cardigan/sweatshirt/blazer) and beyond that only specify colours. It's nice to have a certain degree of identity with a school badge etc, but if you say the uniform is logoed this and logoed that, even if you explicitly state that unlogoed equivalent is okay parents will feel pressure to buy the logoed stuff, and children to wear it.

Personally I'm cheerfully ignoring the bit in the school's 'for parents by parents' guide which says please put children in proper shirts and please put them in a tie - the photo on the front of the very same guide shows at least one child in a polo shirt, and no more than half of them wearing ties!

Former call centre employees for the win

I have my broadband back again. I had to tell the PC and laptop where their DNS servers were, because it appeared the router was lying to them. Bad router. On to the naughty step with you.

Our neighbour came round this morning. She has one child going into Reception with Daughter, and one about to go into Year 1, so is ideally placed to be well informed (having recent experience of starting school, plus caring about it because she's about to go through it again).

So I learned that the school is rather, erm, laid back about telling you what you're supposed to do with your child in the way of reading, homework etc. Which surprises me, maybe they change in later years (school is supposed to be quite academic, which is why this surprises me). On the plus side, she described going to her first parents' evening for her son, and the teacher telling her that she'd picked up on the 'tell' that her son is feeling insecure. Which I thought was pretty good for someone in charge of 30+ children.

30+ because the other thing she said is that there are 34 children in each Reception class. Is that allowed?!

She was also talking about eight days at half term, which is worrying me as I haven't been given a timetable by the school, just used the generic county one. I really hope it isn't eight days. I'm pretty annoyed that we haven't had a timetable actually - we know officially when the children start, but nothing else! I really hope this isn't the beginning of a constant fight where the school fails to acknowledge that parents have lives (and JOBS) and therefore do need to know a few things in advance.

My mum is converting on of Husband's old shirts into a deluxe painting apron for Daughter. :)

Leaving nursery, and birthday parties

I am having 'issues' with my broadband, so I have no idea if this will actually end up being posted.

Fortunately there is no more online shopping to be done, although it would be 'nice' to look at the balance on my credit card ... and when I say 'nice' I mean 'quite alarming really'.

New ballet skirt has arrived, so we're all set for that now. Other Ballet Mum has confirmed the starting date and time as well.

Daughter has just received a second fifth birthday party invitation - it's been interesting to see the pattern in birthday parties developing. There wasn't much around her second birthday, just invites from the two little girls who came to her party. Then for her third she had a joint (village hall) party with one of them, and there was a rash of reciprocal invites in the weeks after. For her fourth, we did the same thing, then there were the reciprocal invites, and then some more about three months later. Now there are a couple for the first month of school. I guess people are more likely to have actual parties as their kids get a little older.

Tomorrow is her last day in nursery. She seems delighted. Obviously I'm glad she's excited about starting school, but I'm a little baffled that she is quite so pleased to be leaving nursery. Baffled, not troubled - it's not in an 'I hate that place and am glad to leave' way at all. I have wondered if she doesn't realise it's for good, but on questioning she does seem to appreciate this - though it's hard to be sure. She's promised that she'll go in to show them her uniform; I'm not sure when we'll do that.

Meanwhile, I am composing a list of things to do while she is in school and I am not in work. Currently I have:
- sort out dentist (my dentist has left the NHS, and I need to either find one who hasn't and is taking on patients, or sort out Denplan or similar)
- get a blood test taken (I have an underactive thyroid and need this monitoring)
- call prison about bike (okay, that really needs explaining - local prison is refurbishing old bikes to send to developing countries, and I've persuaded Husband he does NOT need to keep his old bike in the garage for no reason, so I need to arrange to drop it off)
- new to the list - call Tiscali about my malfunctioning broadband, oh JOY
- go clothes shopping without a bored small child - now that really does deserve JOY
Right then, Ctrl-a (select all), Ctrl-c (copy), then hit 'publish' and hope for the best. Grr.

Tic

I am compulsively checking out the 'back to school' parts of shops to the extent that it's become a nervous tic. Even at the rate at which Reception children are reputed to lose socks, we have enough. I think. Do we need more socks? I seem to be directing my starting-school-by-proxy anxieties into the form of socks.

I did get Daughter something new term but NOT school related the other day - new ballet shoes. I'm flying in the face of the received wisdom ('Reception children will be terribly tired at the end of the school day, even if they are used to full-time nursery, so don't take them to after-school activities') by keeping up Daughter's two classes. Ballet will be Friday 3.35, which I accept may be a disaster, although the Reception children who've made up this class for the last year while Daughter was in 'baby ballet' at 3.00 seemed to have coped perfectly well. Most of the time anyway, there have been a couple of meltdowns. The other class is trampolining, which will be 4.15 on a Monday. Ballet is only half an hour, and not awfully energetic. Trampolining is an hour, and obviously a lot more dynamic. It's the one I really want her to keep up though, as the skills she's picked up would fall away to a greater extent than ballet - I think.

I hope she can cope, if not, we just drop one or both.

Counting down

We're into the real countdown now, and I'm wondering whether we're actually going to hear anything from the school before Daughter starts. I'm not quite sure what else we need to know, but I do feel like I need a bit of hand-holding.

Daughter has actually just this moment* asked if today is a nursery day. No, I said, it's Friday, you don't go to nursery on a Friday. Then, seizing the opportunity, I said she only had three days left at nursery. Smiling she said 'that is not good!' And then she said she was going to tell two of the members of staff about it. Well, no, I said, you can't tell one of them, she's not in work next week. That's why she gave you a big hug yesterday.

I didn't go on to say 'and that's also why she was crying when she gave you that big hug'. I just did a lot of staring at the ceiling and blinking.

More of the same next week. Sigh.

Since this morning, Sainsburys have failed to provide any school tights, but my Next delivery (due yesterday) did include two pairs. Age 5-6, they fit nicely in the legs, and will also keep her armpits lovely and warm.

* when I started writing this over twelve hours ago

Too late to buy

Now I'm pretty sure that when I was at school we used to moan about the shops putting their 'Back to School' signs up the moment we broke up for summer holidays - not two weeks before the schools break up, as it is now. Has it got worse at the other end of the summer holidays? I don't know, as I don't remember anything about getting school uniform, it just seemed to be there. But now it does seem rather awful.

We have most of Daughter's uniform, but I decided today I'd get her a couple of pairs of tights in case the long socks really don't cut it in colder weather. We only looked in a few shops, as I didn't want to drag her across town, but even so I'd have expected a little more success.

BhS - had a fair amount of stock, but mostly in black, navy and white. Grey only seemed to come in 128cm height, or a hip size - the latter presumably for teenage girls rather than littler ones, by which time they're all in 7 denier tights no matter what the weather. Or trousers.

Mothercare - have sidelined their school uniform (not that the selection was good anyway). Well, obviously it's far too late to be buying uniform, with only a whisker over two weeks until term starts. Plenty of grey tights - in age 2-3. Okay, I'm happy for the parents of very tiny Reception children, that they can get uniform in appropriate sizes, but it would be nice to be able to get stuff for a slightly more robust four-year-old.

John Lewis - for a start, while they have a 'back to school' section at the front of the store, it includes no tights or socks, which are with the rest of the children's clothes. Nothing in Daughter's size again.

So it looks like cold legs for winter. Or online ordering.

I'm also rather baffled by the consistency with which local shops stock summer dresses in green gingham, but NOT green knitwear. I'm beginning to think it's a good job that Daughter's school sells logo cardigans and jumpers, because I'd be struggling to find a plain bottle green cardigan elsewhere. Actually I AM struggling to find one, but I'm not too concerned as I only wanted one for spare. Fortunately the fibre content of the official school one (acrylic, acrylic, and more acrylic) should mean that it'll pretty much dry the moment it comes out of the washing machine, so if it suffers any mishaps it can probably be turned around for the next day.

Tights aside, we are now all set, with a few omissions:

- need to ask my mum nicely if she will turn one of Husband's old shirts into a painting overall (I lack the sewing wherewithall, and the elastic)
- need to practise eating packed lunch (undoing pots and packets etc)
- need to get fit of ballet shoes checked, and (probably) buy new ones - this isn't exactly school-related, but required about the same tme

I am in denial about the bottom-wiping issue, as is Daughter, judging by her reaction to my reasonable request that she give it a go herself.

New shoes and ...

... lots of other stuff.

Now, the Other Blog is where I will go 'squee, I bought Daughter's schools shoes, they are ...' and link to the (probably) Startrite website. But this is about the practicalities. This is going to be, day by day*, what it's like to send your child off to a state primary school in 2008.

Daughter's school uniform consists of grey skirt, trousers or pinafore (trousers or shorts for boys), white shirt, official school cardigan or jumper; school colour gingham or candy-stripe dress in summer; white socks and black shoes. Pretty straightforward, although on describing it I was asked by a colleague if it was a private school. Is it unusual in that it specifies cardigan or jumper rather than a sweatshirt, and shirts rather than polo shirts? Oh - and there is a tie.

We were sent a guide for parents, by parents and teachers. It says to please put your child in the tie, and please put them in shirts rather than polo shirts, unless you think they'll struggle with either, or fiddle with the tie. Against which, in the safety of my own home, I rebel. Daughter is FOUR, for heaven's sake, she will fiddle with the tie, and she is not the most grown-up and independent of four-year-olds, she will struggle with a shirt. Why inflict a shirt's-worth of buttons on a child (and her teacher/teaching assistant/parent helper) when you can reduce it to a mere three buttons on a polo shirt?

Anyway, I've closely inspected the photos on the website and in the prospectus, and peered out of my living room window at the children on their way to school, and they definitely don't all wear the tie! Phew.

So, in interpretation, this is what Daughter has lined up in her wardrobe waiting for September:

- two grey pinafore dresses, selected for long zips (£10 each, cheaper ones often have short zips)
- three gingham summer dresses, one zip-up (£8) and two with buttons (£4 each), I figure it may still be warm enough for dresses in September, and if not they're in age 5-6, so should (!?) still fit next summer
- six white polo shirts (they come in packs of three, £3 per pack)
- official school cardigan (£9.50)
- five pairs of long white socks and five pairs of white ankle socks (I think £11 in total)
- plain white t-shirts for PE (£3 for a pack of three)
- black shorts for PE (£3 for two)

So that's £68.50 on basic uniform. The shoes will take it over £100, and then there'll be plimsolls to buy in the spring - they don't do PE at all in the settling-in period, which is 6.5 weeks, and after that PE is indoors in bare feet for the rest of the autumn/winter term.

It's not a fortune, but it's not inconsiderable either. But I could have economised on the pinafores, easily, and bought only the cheaper summer dresses - or no summer dresses at all. The cheapest way to do it, I would think, is to buy skirts which will do for all year round, provided not excessive growth takes place. But I think pinafores are easy to deal with for a small child, and certainly easier for a small child to keep vaguely smart - no coming untucked. And the gingham dresses are lovely in the summer. I could also have bought a generic school colour cardigan - seeing as the uniform is officially optional (I think this is a legal requirement of state schools?) I don't see how they can actually mandate a particular cardigan.

During the first of Daughter's one hour twenty minute familiarisation visits to the school, I visited the school shop for a few items. One was the cardigan, and the others were a bookbag (£3.50), water bottle (£1.50) and PE bag (£1.50). It seems no bad thing to have the bookbag so that I'll know exactly where to look for letters from school, and homework when it comes. The children are encouraged to have a water bottle to drink from as they please, and £1.50 seems like a fair price, and the school has a requirement for PE bags for the reception class (don't ask) which means most off the peg ones aren't appropriate. I was going to ask my mum to make one, but at £1.50 she couldn't undercut the school shop! She has customised it though, so it stands out a little from the rest.

There's another £6.50.

And finally, lunchtime accoutrements - Daughter wants a packed lunch. I unwisely asked her if she wanted school dinner or a lunchbox while she was happily tucking into a Waitrose cafe lunchbox, so of course she opted for a lunchbox. She is sticking to this. So she has a completely unnecessary Disney Sleeping Beauty lunch bag, which she will probably want replaced with High School Musical before Christmas, and a pink gingham reusable sandwich wrapper.

£14.00 in total.

£95.50, and no new shoes yet.

You'll also notice that the nametags are missing. I'm not counting those - hey, I have basic accountancy training, I'm not counting the cost of something that'll be used over the next ? years! Anyway, I bought most of them four years ago when Daughter started nursery. I quickly came to my senses and realised that labelling a baby/toddler/pre-schooler's 'nursery clothes' potentially means labelling ALL their clothes, and used hardly any of them. So I have a vast number of sew-in and iron-on labels at my disposal. I've used sew-in for the items that might be passed or sold on (dresses, pinafores, cardigan) and iron-on for those I expect to get trashed, and/or were extremely cheap (polo-shirts and PE kit).

* although the process actually started last May, when we visited the school, and happily decided we liked it enough not to bother visiting any others. In fact, really it started over seven years ago when, with child-rearing in mind, we bought a house not far from what we vaguely understood to be a good school.

The Basics

Us:
Daughter - 4 years old at the time of writing, hence off to school in September. Born pretty much half-way through the school year, so she'll be neither the youngest nor the oldest. Education to date - been at nursery since she was six months old.
Me - 30-*mumble* years old at the time of writing, and not getting any younger. Sigh. I work in the public sector, currently three days a week. Education to date: first year to do GCSEs (that dates me), four A-levels (took three years to achieve), one 2.1 degree from a redbrick university, professional qualifications.
Husband - 30-*mumble* PLUS ONE MONTH ha ha. Same public sector employer as me. Does stuff with computers. Education to date: ditto on the GCSEs, A-levels of some description, first-class degree in hard subject from slightly comic university.

The school:
Location: approximately two minutes' walk away. Yay! Urban/suburban location on the edge of a major town; fairly affluent middle-class catchment (not that it actually has a catchment area of course).
Status: voluntary controlled (this is the slightly less alarming incarnation of the faith school, where the LEA is responsible for admissions criteria and funding, and employs the staff); it's a CofE school with no religious entry criteria.
Ofsted think: it's outstanding.

The plan:
I'm switching my contract to term-time only at the start of September, i.e. I will only be paid for 42.2 weeks out of the 52.2 in the year, but the pay will be spread evenly over the year. I'll be 'unpaid' for the long school holidays, and take half-terms as annual leave.
I will work approximately 08.30 to 14.30, with Husband taking Daughter to school and me collecting her.

The back-up plan:
The doting grandparents (my parents) twenty minutes up the road.

The philosophy:
I wanted minimal dependencies when Daughter starts school - no reciprocal arrangements with friends, no breakfast club, no after-school club, no relying on the grandparents, etc. Just Husband (school drop-off), and my (our) remarkably accommodating employer (term-time contract). That way it can only get better as Daughter acquires friends, and is a more appropriate age for before/after school activities - can't it?

Mission Statement

I thought about calling this blog 'Slipping Through My Fingers', after the Abba song in Mamma Mia which nearly caused me an embarrassing 'weeping in the cinema' incident - it struck a chord, with my daughter about to slip through my fingers and off to school. But no, I should be positive about this new chapter in our lives, so the blog gets a ... neutral name.

The idea is to separate out my thoughts and experiences of sending my PFB* to school from my other blogging presence (which will remain unlinked-to from here**.

I will endeavour to be as candid as possible, without identifying myself, my daughter, her friends, the school ... and without embarrassing my daughter. She's four, my mere existence isn't an embarrassment yet; I'd like to keep it that way for a bit longer.

* precious first born, although she is actually a POB
** I will probably link from there to here, but not from here to there