“What did you do at school today?”

Do you have children at nursery or school? Do you like to ask them what they’ve been up to? I ask Lily every day after school what she got up to, and getting any kind of information out of her is as about as easy as trying to get blood from a stone. A typical conversation goes like this:

Me: How was your day at school?
Lily: Good!
Me: What did you get up to?
Lily: Lots!
Me: Like…?
Lily: umm…I can’t remember.
Me: *in my head* are you fricking kidding? you’ve LITERALLY JUST BEEN AT SCHOOL.
Me: Oh! That much you can’t remember? Maybe it’ll come to you later.

 

Completed the Big Friendly Read in the Summer Holidays

Sometimes I’m lucky and she’ll tell me something she did at school…in reception…She’s halfway through Year 1 now. Lily’s school is a double intake, so there are 2 classes for each year (14 classes altogether!) In the other Year 1 class, and other classes at school, they have a pretty cool feature called “Dojo.” Dojo is a secure website/app that allows teachers to write up what’s the kids have been doing in class, what they’ve been learning, what their targets are, their behaviour and participation in class and there’s even a feature that allows parents to message the teacher directly. (It’s all private and secure, if you don’t have a username and passcode you can’t access it.) Lily’s class doesn’t do this, which really frustrates me because I want to get involved with what she’s been learning at school, and as stated above, it’s pretty hard to get any information out of her.

 

 

Fairy tale Character dress up day

 

Today was a nice surprise though, we did our usual conversation which was then followed with: “Oh! We did PE today and we did it based on Shrek!” – their topic this term is fairy tales – She then proceeded to discuss what they did in PE, and to be honest, I had absolutely no idea what she was trying to explain. I “ooh!” and “ahh I see!” in the places I thought best, and she seemed content with that. They had to do something twice then 4 times (I missed what though, or she didn’t tell me…either is plausible.) I was just over the moon that she was sharing something with me! To be honest, she is getting better at talking about school, it’s a slow process, but I remember in reception the teachers told us that through the excitement of being at school, it’s likely that the children do genuinely forget what they’ve done, or it’s a case of them feeling independent and not wanting to share with you their adventures of school as they see it as them being a “big boy/girl” and don’t feel the need to share with you. Either way, it’s frustrating when you want to praise them for work they’ve done, or games they’ve played.

 

“Head, shoulders, knees and toes!”

 

I’ve found a way around this tricky question however! Lily and I walk home with another school friend and her mum, and she’s a little chatterbox! It’s great because she will tell her mum everything they did at school, even to what was on the school lunch menu. I can listen to what’s being said and then include Lily into the conversations and she opens up (more to her friend than me) “Yeah! We did that didn’t we! And then we did this!”  So all hope isn’t lost I suppose, and I don’t think she’s trying to be awkward on purpose, I mean the amount of times I tell her that “mummy is psychic!”, she’s probably just testing my fake skills out…Lesson to be learned here: Don’t lie to your kids. ha.

How do you wriggle the answer out of your kids? I’d love to know some tricks!

Becky xo