"You shall go to the ball ..."

Yesterday was another “teacher/parent” meeting at Joseph’s school; a chance to sit face to face with his teacher whom we hear so much about but interact with so little. Any chance to meet and chat is great.

And, at the back of your mind, you kinda know (or hope), all is going well for your children and their education, even at such a young age, but when you hear it from their teachers, their mentor’s, the one’s who are preparing the learning foundations for their young minds, well, it makes you feel damn good.

For yourself as well as for them.

And sitting there, looking through his books, you realise how much work they actually get through in the course of a week. They fill up their books at an incredible rate and you see the transition from childish scrawl with rough colouring, to definite shapes, forms and colours that more closely relate to the “norm”.

In one lovely drawing, he had drawn himself, his sister, Mum and me, with the three of them with huge dark brown eyes (accurate) and me with green eyes (accurate).

It might not sound much but when you combine the drawing with his number work and his attempts at writing words out as he hears them, it is wonderful, and although he got a few more unusual words wrong (I think light sabre is fairly unusual don’t you?), she had just ticked it and put a big smiley face, saying well done.

I liked that.

Collecting Annabel from nursery later the same evening, I found them wrapped up and playing in the ‘garden’ and someone has hung an old car tyre from a (very small) tree on which the toddlers are all vying to get on.

Annabel of course wants me to see her have a turn and so in she climbs, face down and lying motionless as the member of staff spins her round and round and round until finally the rope is as tight as it will go.

I can hear her chuckling away, hair hanging down in front of her face and then, she’s off, speed building as the rope unwinds itself, faster, faster, faster, about 25 turns, her face and feet inching their way closer to the ground before, the rope bottoms out and she comes to a halt. The expected grin as she stands is there but her eyes appear to still be spinning in their sockets and I put my arms out as she side steps, crab-like into me, CRASH! laughing all the while.

So there you go; both children, different ages, laying down the foundations for experiencing life in very different ways.

If only that carefree bliss could last forever.