When Kelly dropped Ben off at school today, his new teacher, Miss Bowyer, came out and said ‘hello’ to her and asked her which child was her’s. Kelly said it was Ben and Miss Bowyer said ‘oh the clever sensible one’ !! hahaha I WISH!!!
Last Friday was Ben’s 1st day back to school after the Summer holidays – so he is now in Year 1. This year he won’t be able to just go out and play when he wants to, he will have proper work to do and one set of homework to do each week. Also this year, Ben is entitled to a free school dinner every day. This sounds good but unfortunately the school has decided that because of this, all children have to have a school dinner and aren’t allowing children to bring in packed lunches any more. This is not ideal as the menu for several days contains food that Ben will not eat! Other children have the same issue so there could be interesting times ahead, especially if children come home hungry after not eating their school meal.
Ben was very excited to go back and was looking forward to seeing his friends again. He is now in Miss Bowyer’s class and has to wait at a different part of the school to go into the classroom. Let’s hope he does well this year!
Here are some pics of him on his 1st day back. 😉
For 6 weeks, we had paid money for Ben to go to ‘Balanceability’ lessons at school. These lessons were to help him to ride a bike, and were within school time.
Before he started these lessons, he couldn’t ride his bike, or even balance on it. He also even struggled to sit on it! We had been out a couple of times with him to try and teach him, but then we had a letter back from School about these balanceability lessons. We thought for £24, it wouldn’t hurt at all, as we thought they would help him get used to a bike. We certainly didn’t think that by the time he got to his final lesson, he could actually ride his bike!! But he could!!
For the final lesson, parents were invited in to watch, so Kelly went along with Aaron and Coby (unfortunately I had to work as I had been off ill for a few days beforehand). Kelly was amazed at what she saw and took some videos of him!! Ben was cycling with no problem at all, and not slowly either, he was bombing around apparently!
We are so pleased with this and so glad that we paid the money for these lessons! Ben is very happy as well as he can now ride a bike and wants to go out with me on Drake’s Trail at some point soon! He also got a certificate at the end of the course, which was presented to him in assembly the following week.
A few days after his last lesson, we went up to Mount Batten so Ben could show me how he can ride his bike. I had already seen the videos that Kelly took of his last lesson, so I was looking forward to seeing him cycle. Mount Batten was an ideal place as the long pier gave him plenty of room to cycle around.
When he started to cycle there, I was very impressed as well. He had absolutely no problems at all and was zooming up and down the pier! He was also doing pretty sharp turns at a pretty fast speed which was a bit worrying to begin with, but he was having no problems doing it at all!
Suffice to say, we are both very proud of him and still can’t really believe that he can cycle so well after only 6 lessons! They were only 45 minutes each as well and not one-to-one, which made it more incredible to us! We now just need to go out plenty of times to keep him going! 😉
A few weeks ago, Ben was learning about bugs and insects for a week. The week included a trip to Dartmoor Zoo, which he enjoyed, and a hands on experience with bugs! Ben touched a Blue Tongued Skink and a Milk Snake, but didn’t like it much!
At the end of the week, he had to dress up as a bug or insect, so Kelly made him an Ant outfit (see pics below).
