We have officially 'gone back to school'.  Around here the return date has varied from last Wednesday to tomorrow, Tuesday.  We 'started' on Thursday on one of the most miserable days of the year!

  The temperature here has plummeted in the last week.  We've gone from mildly summer weather to COLD and miserable, wet and windy.  Down in the south of the UK they'd had a little return to summer over the last few weeks, sadly we hadn't, but now we've given up hope of a return to anything remotely decent and put away summer attire.  I had to laugh on Friday when I was out because everyone I spoke to kept on saying, 'Well, we're supposed to have some nice weather next week.'  It was like a mantra that no-one felt ready to abondon hope of sunshine just yet and perhaps if we all said it often enough then we really might get some decent weather again!  To be fair, the forecast is pretty good, but then it comes from the same people who told us we would have a 'barbeque summer'.  Yeah, right!

  Anyway. back to our first day.  I was SO glad we were at home.  It threw it down at 'off to school time' and then during all the break times and lunch time and then just as school finished for the day the heavens opened again with yet another deluge.  Poor kids, poor parents, poor teachers.  What a dreadful start to a new year for them.  And here we were, safe and warm at home, not the slightest bedraggled, wet, or stinky (do you remember how classrooms smell on a wet day?) 

  We calmly went through our maths and reading, our social studies and our technology - wow, that sounds good... if I tell you what we actually did and don't call it fancy names it sounds far more normal. 

  We were delighted to get our new Lego club magazine and entered the competition within a few seconds of getting it (maybe that will make a difference!)  It provided some good reading and inspiration for 'technology'.  I had bought some odds bits of lego on ebay and gave them to them as a 'back-to-school' gift.  They were both really pleased and LJ set out to make some new designs.  I like to have some 'proper sets' but I think that just odd bits provide more incentive to be creative - mind you, I've just spent nearly an hour on the Lego site, carefully choosing more individual 'odd' bricks to give them at Christmas, so maybe not quite so 'odd bits' as all that.  The boys are really enjoying Star Wars at the moment so their designs are heavily influenced by that. 

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  Our maths was started with a read aloud (in bed) followed by discussing and finding 2D and 3D shapes and naming them around the house.

  Our social studies was an author study - a read aloud (simple version) of Enid Blyton's life as we are reading her 'Secret Seven' stories at the moment, interspersed with other things like Mr Men and occasionally a 'Thomas' book (for PJ) and Star Wars books.  I know more about Star Wars than I ever wanted to - believe me!

  They also both read to me and we officially finished the 'reading quest' we've been doing for the library this summer.

  It was a very gentle and completely unstressful return to school.  Long may it last!