Our Room 5 Adventures

AWWWWWW we love babies.  A huge congratulations to Julian and his lovely family on the safe arrival of a little baby girl.  We can’t wait to see a photo.  Mrs Brown LOVES babies especially.  There have been lots of great name suggestions by the way – Finn suggested Nelson Russell (his middle and last name), Owlette was another great suggestion that made us smile.  Congratulations from all of us here in Room 5.

AND it is so nice to hear all the banter of the children again – they are so gorgeous.  There was a fabulous conversation this morning between Sebastian and Julian about how they are so similar….”We both have 3 in our family (siblings they mean), we both wear glasses, our parents are doctors and we both love the same games, we are just the same”.  The children’s conversations always make me smile!

Wow I am so impressed with everyone’s beanstalks!

Eloise and family took their beanstalk on their family trip to Napier – that must have been the secret to making it grow so tall!!  Wow.

Tristan went to Parry Kauri Park in Warkworth today. Tristan had a great time with his cousins and family.

Phoebe had a great time skiing and also managed lots of bike adventures with ice cream.   Looks fun Phoebe!

Phoebe with big brother Louis.  I am sure older sister Chloe had fun too.  Little baby Freddie would have loved having all his siblings home to play I bet!

Wow look at your bean stalk Gabriel!  You have done a great job looking after that!  Pleased to hear you had a lovely holiday climbing, swimming and playing with your friends and cousin.

Well done Eloise!!!  Great to see you doing some word work over the holidays!  You are a learning super star for sure.

Before teaching I was a writer and every now and then I get asked to write the odd thing. A few of us provided our views on being a parent of teenagers. Here are some general ponderings if you are interested…

Parenting teenagers brings endless decisions and hearty debates to navigate together. Now of course your children have more to say about everything.  Endless discussions on bed times, study times, phone time, what they eat, their pocket money, what extra curricular activities they do and don’t have time for, their schoolwork and how they apply themselves, or not, how they treat one another, and how they treat me, feeding the cat, doing chores, the list goes on. Dilemmas we now navigate together are breathtaking some days. And when your offspring actually become smarter than you and more effective at arguing coherently, arghhhhhh. You need a good night’s sleep to tackle the diplomatic mine fields that the teenage years bring.  In many ways I have found I have less time for me now than when the girls were younger.  But what I do know is this stage is the last step before my child turns into an adult, so what I do is important.  Parenthood is about chapters and parenting a teenager is exhausting but it is also my most favourite and rewarding challenge.  Watching my daughters turn into good humans is a source of huge pride. I can start to see some of the values I have tried so hard to install over the years come out as they navigate their way through their own worlds. 

When the girls were younger it was a mission to get them to eat fruit in their lunchbox each day.  Olivia would only eat oranges and Georgia would only eat kiwifruit.

Schools promote healthy eating and you might have seen all the news stories recently wanting schools to make drinking water only compulsory.  We are lucky that at our school our families are really great at providing healthy lunchbox eating. Good luck with those lunch boxes this term though!  I know it isn’t always easy.

Just love your Pikachu cake Tristan!  Sounds like you had a fun time at the holiday programme with your friends.  A big happy birthday to you!