Birthdays, rain and school

It's my youngest daughters tenth birthday this weekend. We had planned on going camping and inviting a group of her friends to come along. Unfortunately there has been some horrendous weather sweeping across the North Island this week and it has decided to hit Wellington at the weekend.

Everything in our garden (including our lovely stone kingfishers) is absolutely sodden.

So rather than going camping we are having a birthday sleepover at ours for Alice and four of her mates. Since its been steadily pouring since about 3am this morning her birthday will now involve copious amounts of fizz, pizza and playing on the X-box. Not as much fun in my opinion as camping but Alice seems thrilled with the whole thing.

Her friends have brought her some wonderful presents and the lovely notice board came with description of Alex's bottom already added!

The flowers at the beginning of this post were giving to me by the Board of Trustees at my daughters school. They were a thank you for being on the board for the past year. The Board of Trustees manage the school in much the same way as Governors do in the UK. They are responsible for hiring and firing staff, managing the budget and the policies behind the organisation. Its an awful lot of responsibility and work for volunteers and I am in awe of all the people who work so hard in these positions. I recently resigned from my Board as I couldn't do the job justice whilst working full time.

It's an odd situation where people who volunteer and are voted into these posts, then have the responsibility of managing huge budgets and making decisions that affect the future of so many children. Often these volunteers have no prior experience in education, running businesses or writing policies. I know its a struggle for a lot of schools to find any Board members, never mind ones that are actually capable of doing the job!

I certainly don't think I was particularly good at the job and only really put myself forward because I was interested in how the school was run and why certain decisions were made. I do question the wisdom of running schools in this way as you are dependent on the right people being voted in, and it not being a popularity contest. I guess its rather like any election - you're relying on the public making the right decision. And as recent events prove, the public doesn't always do that!

The Importance of Being Playful

My girls are genius's. Obviously! Today J came home from school with a very nice certificate for being a "caring, friendly and hardworking member of the class" and A came home with her record book from Kindergarten full of photos of her exploring water, sand and ice.

They have settled in so well into the system over here I cannot fault it at all - so far.

J went to maternelle for a short time in Belgium where the kids start at 2 and a half. They troop in there at 9am with their little ruck sacks on their backs and stay a full day until 3.15. They sit in a classroom environment from such a young age it seems like their childhood ends far too soon. I am so happy the A has the opportunity for free play at Kindy. She seems to spend most of her time there dressed as Dorothy the Dinosaur and being chased around the sandpit by her best mate Noah who likes to dress up as a Tiger. That's what childhood should be about.

It has been a busy few weeks for us as J has been going swimming with the school three times this week and will be going three times next week as well. She has also been having swimming lessons each week after school as well this term. So she has been rapidly turning into my own little mermaid.

The way our school has handled the swimming has brought home to me some of the differences between schools in New Zealand and the UK. J's amazing teacher (for the purposes of this blog we will call him Mr X) has developed a class blog which he updates daily describing what the class has been doing. He has put pictures of the kids at the swimming pool this week which is great not only can we see what J has been up to but so can her Grandparents in the UK.

This would just not happen at a school in the UK. Taking pictures of other peoples children and then publishing them on the net would not be allowed. The ubiquitous and media hyped fear of the wrong type of person taking advantage of our children in the UK has meant that things that would have at one time been thought of as perfectly normal have now become unacceptable and dangerous. One dad in the UK was questioned by police after he was taking photos of his own children on the swings in the park. Another parent had reported him as she felt that he shouldn't be taking photos of children in a public place. I find this so sad. I hope New Zealand does not go down this route.