Since I restarted this blog it’s all been a bit doom and gloom and me, me ME! So I thought I’d post about some other stuff that’s been happening in our lives because, let’s face it, I have four kids. The amount of “stuff” is endless.
Skunky, my fabulous five-year-old boy, who has grown and changed so much since I was last blogging, has started school. I think I mentioned that before but I came across this photo of his first day in my camera the other day and I thought I would share.
I unfortunately missed participating in his first day much because I had surgery just two days earlier and was laid up recovering. I love him in his school uniform. He goes from being my baby to my independent school boy with just a navy polo shirt and a hat. He feels pretty pleased with his uniform too.
He’s been doing really well at school. He finds it utterly exhausting, by the end of the week we get frequent tears and accusations that we are being mean to him, poor poppet.
Last year at kindy he had absolutely no interest in learning to read or write so it has been a really steep learning curve for him but I’m really pleased with how he’s going. We had a parent/teacher interview the other day and she’s pleased with his progress too.
He’s always been such a loud bouncy kid, a stereotypical boy in lots of ways. His teacher reports that he is actually really quiet and reserved in class but that he is getting better every day at asking for help and involving himself in group activities.
He’s developed a really nice group of friends and even though he only identifies a few kids as his friends he gets approached by lots of other kids who want to play with him (some not even in his class) both at school and around the local area, like yesterday at the supermarket.
He’s really taking this reading business seriously and we’ll often catch him sounding out words to himself or practising his writing/guessing at the spelling of things. I wasn’t sure that he’d be any more interested than he was at kindy but obviously being surrounded by kids who are just that little bit ahead of him gives him the motivation to work at it. His teacher’s pretty wonderful too and we feel really lucky that she’s so caring and has done such a wonderful job of sparking his interest in reading.
He’s always been interested in collecting rocks and sticks (because really who wouldn’t be) and in animals – marine animals in particular. If you ask him he’ll say he just loves science but this was particularly evident when we visited the local library the other day. He borrowed a book about geology, a book about octopuses and squid and a book about space. He also insisted that he needed one about zombies, just to round things off, natch.
I was feeling up to a short walk with kids and dog yesterday arvo, which was lovely. Skunky likes to go for special walks he calls “stick walks” where the focus of activity is collecting interesting sticks. We didn’t have much luck on the stick front yesterday but he did find a pleasingly smooth fist-sized pebble that he pocketed. It was during this walk that he came up with the idea of writing a guide to stick walks to help people identify the best places to find sticks in the local area. He also thought it might be useful to include a guide to the flowers that can be found in our neighbourhood at various times of the year.
I don’t know where he gets this stuff from but I love the way his mind works. I could listen to his ideas all day.
Callapipper Tree 
We’re collectors of interesting sticks here too. In fact, I’m as likely to pick one up as the ten year old. A stick walk guide might come in handy for us.
I love his thin little legs poking out from the huge shorts. Very cute. I’m glad he’s doing so well at school.
The stick guide book is an excellent idea. I like it very, very much. I will buy a copy from him when it is finished, for sure.