Shannon

I've said very little about Shannon lately, and I want to remedy that. Unfortunately it's late and I want to go to sleep.

Anyway, there have been a few bumps in the road of her beginning school. And I haven't yet figured out what it's all about.

She started off very happily indeed. She enjoyed it, had no problem going, really looked forward to it. For the first two weeks she only stayed there till lunchtime, and then from the 3rd week onwards she was full-time. And it wasn't long before the complaints started. She started to say in the morning that she didn't want to go to school. She missed me too much, she wanted me to be with her, or her to be with me at home. Unfailingly, however, when picked up from school she would say she'd had a good time, she'd done fun things and all seemed to be well. Anyway, after a few days of this, I spoke to her class teacher and we agreed that Shannon could come home at lunchtime and just do half-days till half-term. That seemed to go down well with Shannon. Problem hopefully solved.

But no, she is still often saying she doesn't want to go. Her teacher says, however, and I believe her, that Shannon is perfectly fine while there. She joins in, enjoys herself, takes part wholeheartedly. I believe it because I have seen it myself. Having been in school with Jade quite a bit, and still going in at unusual times for collecting Jade and other things, I have taken the opportunity to peek in at Shannon. She is invariably smiling, laughing, joining in and looking fine. Yet she says she doesn't want to go. And she isn't out of the house for any longer than she was when she was at nursery, which she was very happy with. So I don't quite know what it is all about. I am torn, because although I don't want her to be unhappy, I don't want to withdraw her to HE just yet either. I am just yearning for enough time at home to achieve various specific things, and she isn't obviously unhappy while she's there anyway. If she was standing forlornly in corners looking sad and withdrawn it would be a very different matter, but she isn't. I will continue to listen to her, try and understand exactly what's bothering her and be open to whatever action needs to be taken, but I am hoping that she doesn't need to be deregistered quite yet!

She is however reading fairly fabulously. She can read some words that surprise me at her ability, and yet still asks about other words that have fairly simple phonic blends in them, but nevertheless she's not 5 yet and can read "Green Eggs and Ham" easily and is on about Level 4 of the Oxford Reading Tree series.

And she did hugely impress her teacher about 10 days ago, by writing numbers 1 - 36 on a whiteboard, and only stopping at that point because she ran out of space. Her teacher took her off to the headmaster's office for a special "hoorah for Shannon" moment! I don't know what level the other kids are at - it seems fairly normal for me with my two - I just wish I'd had the presence of mind to comment that that was what home education did for you! She's very into maths, numbers, very much likes adding and taking away numbers less than 10, and often asks to do a workbook at bedtime instead of a story!