Well, I successfully got my booster vaccination yesterday afternoon, with no ill effects so far, apart from a rather bruised arm where the pharmacist administered the vaccination. Now I need to keep reminding Phil to go and have his booster. The chemist warned me that they will stop offering them at the end of this month.
Today Granddaughter Number Four was dropped off at our house at about 7.30 am. She was supposed to be going to visit her oldest sister, Granddaughter Number One, but said older sister had come down with some kind of vomiting bug and so that visit was cancelled. The last thing a busy working mother (my daughter) needs is a vomiting bug invading her household. Granddaughter Number Four was quite upset. In the last few weeks, largely since Granddaughter Number One’s housemate acquired a set of wheels, we have seen little of the eldest grandchild, despite her only living a few miles away. Not just us, he mother and siblings too. Her smallest sister misses her.
So, in compensation, she came to spend a day at our house, where we were able to do activities which are difficult to do with her small brother in tow, charming company as he is. We did some stitching - she wants to learn to do fancy embroidery eventually - an activity that is well nigh impossible with a bouncy four year old around. We played matching games, without anyone throwing the cards around. We went for a walk round the village, resurrecting a game we used to play when out on walks when she was much smaller, a game where she is a small cat and I am its companion, a small dog! In that guise, when we went past the small pond in the woody area just outside the village centre and found it full of small fish, we had to have a pretend protest by the “cat” who wanted to eat them! Just a few of the Grandmother - Granddaughter activities we get up to.
In the mid-afternoon we set off to walk to Dobcross via the forest path to collect her small brother from pre-school. I had half expected some protest at that point but she gamely walked the walk, skirting mud-puddles, dodging nettles and talking politely to dog-walkers (and the dogs) we met along the way. Hurrah for a granddaughter who will happily walk the approximately eight kilometres we have covered over the day. Not bad for a seven year old!
I’ve only just got around to looking at newspapers online. I see that the Conservatives are still mired in the slime of Frank Hester, their biggest ever donor. Hester is alleged to have referred to a staff member as the “token Muslim”, imitated people of Chinese descent and remarked that one individual was attractive for a black woman, according to former employees who spoke to the Guardian. Well, he sounds like an asset to the party!
There’s a lot of kerfuffle about who fared best in the televised debate between Sunak and Starmer. I didn’t see any of it and i do ‘t think I want to.
I’m reading about the fact that children in the UK and Ireland are reading fewer books than they did last year, according to a new report, as post-Covid absences from school and a lack of dedicated reading time contribute to lower reading abilities. This is more of a problem in secondary schools than in the primary sector. The pupils surveyed were shown to read progressively more challenging books until year 6 - the final year of primary school. After that, the difficulty level of books being read tended to plateau until year 9, before a “sharp drop” in the difficulty of those read by older secondary students.
It has long seemed to me that your child goes through primary school with almost daily communication about what they have been doing and what they have been reading. Then suddenly they move on to secondary school, where there is no longer one teacher overseeing your child’s whole curriculum. Subject content becomes more specialised and different teachers oversee your child’s progress in different areas. Once again I find myself maintaining that some of the problem is the sheer size of most secondary schools, making it easy for pupils to become anonymous.
Perhaps one way to address the reading problem would be to make tutor group time into reading time, with personal tutors reading aloud to pupils (even 15 and 16 year olds) and sending them home with a list of stuff to read, even providing copies of books, with some choice, of course. Parents should verify that reading has actually taken place, rather like checking and signing the homework diary.
But maybe I’m too idealistic about reading. And besides it would work best if the parents also read books on a regular basis.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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