Endings, Celebrations and New Beginnings.

It has been a momentous week in the Brunt household. Our eldest daughter has had her fifth birthday, her last day of Kindergarten and her first day of school. She is thoroughly exhausted and so are we. It was all far too emotional and her birthday party which was great fun, was also very hard work and mentally and physically very trying!

Thursday was Js last day at Kindergarten and they have a "Celebration" ceremony which involves making a special crown, being in charge of ringing the bell and stamping everyones hand as they leave. This is clearly a very big responsibility and J took it very seriously! It was actually a really nice way to say goodbye to her friends at Kindy and we were given a fantastic record book of her time there. It was filled with photos of J taken since she had started at Kindy and showed her playing with all her friends and all the different activities she had taken part in. She loved her time there and is really going to miss it.

Friday was then her first day at school. This was a very big deal, especially for me! I still think she is far too short to be starting full time education. But J was very enthusiastic about the whole thing and couldn't wait to go in the morning. She has to take a packed lunch as the school doesn't have a Kitchen and she had a new bag and (thanks to her Great Grandparents) a new outfit.

When I picked her up she was limping and looking a bit sorry for herself. She had apparently fallen over at lunch time and she very proudly told me that she had needed "two whole plasters" to make it better. Her teacher came out and told me that she had been very happy all day apart from the falling over incident and seemed to be settling in well.

The school is not a very big one and all the staff are very approachable and friendly. It is much more open than most UK schools as you can wander into the school without having to go through reception and you are welcomed into the classroom at the start of the day. I really like the fact that the start of the school is made such a special event and all the children I have met are really looking forward to starting. J was welcomed by her teacher, her head of department and the Head Teacher himself. All individually came and welcomed her. It was a really good start to her school life.

It was Js party on Saturday from 2-4pm, and that was definitely long enough! We had jointly decided on a Dinosaur theme. So we had spent all week cutting out numerous dinosaurs and footprints to decorate the house. Everyone we had invited turned up so we had 8 very excited little girls and one brave little boy running around the house at high speed. We are now experts in party games and can recommend the bursting dinosaur egg game (balloons with tiny dinosaur babies inside), hunt the cake (T-Rex stolen the cake which they have to find using photo clues) and the dinosaur egg and spoon race (decorated hard boiled eggs). One very important tip is to not scare them too much. We made a dinosaur cave out of a large cardboard box which I introduced by saying that they had to crawl through the box in turn and if they were in there whilst the music was on they would be eaten by the T-Rex. This, I now know, is rather scary for 4 and 5 year old girls and so they all refused to crawl through!

The party in the end was really good fun and as you can see from the photos, I think everyone enjoyed themselves!

We created a "jurassic atmosphere" with cartoon dinos and lots of footprints.

The birthday girl.
The amazing cake!