Happy Half Term

Although mummy and daddy were both working this week, we tried hard to make sure Jamie had a good time.  We were lucky that Nana had a number of events planned for him - including a Halloween trail with cousin Noah, and that Alfie's mum invited Jamie over one day (mummy dropped him off on the way to work and picked him up when she had finished!).

On the Thursday afternoon, as soon as mummy finished work she picked Jamie up fro Nana's and we went pumpkin carving at the girls house.  And then on Friday - Halloween - mummy wasn't working, so Jamie and mummy put up the decorations while waiting for Lucy to arrive.  Daddy and uncle Dean went off to see a band in Nottingham and the rest of us went Trick or Treating!!

It Is Always Someones Birthday...

Jamie loves to tell me - just as I am leaving him at his class door - that its 'Bear, Bears' Birthday or 'Lion's' birthday or 'Nev's' or whoever he can think of, birthday.   

What this means is we need to pick up a cake after work, find some candles and sing happy birthday. 

This is an almost weekly occurrence at the moment!

Parents Evening Superstar!

So proud of Jamie.  I know he is only 5 but I was happy to hear what his teachers said about him last night.  Mrs D called him a 'Superstar'. 

His work and behaviour are both good.  Mrs T mentioned he wasn't one of the louder children always with their hands up, but she said 'we have enough of those.'  They both felt his confidence to be improving and saw no problems with his social interaction.

As for his targets, when Mrs T went through them she said that she actually felt Jamie was already on top of those given.

We discussed our only real concern (other than his missing photo on the wall) of PE and Mrs D admitted she never liked PE either so I think that made Jamie feel better.  Both teachers said that they had not realised this and said he did a good job of still trying. 

We had promised Jamie a McDonalds so off we went.  We went to the drive through, ordered and then drove to the next open window.  Unfortunately we should have actually stopped at the first window (but it was shut so I assumed we went to the next open window!) so that meant we had not paid.  This caused a small amount of confusion......and we ended up getting our meals for free!

Step away from the smartphone....

Children who spend five days away from their smartphones, televisions and other screens were substantially better at reading facial emotions afterwards, a new study has found. www.spring.org.uk/2014/08/why-you-should-take-a-week-long-break-from-all-screens.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PsychologyBlog+%28PsyBlog%29

The UCLA study suggests that children’s social skills are hurt by spending less and less time interacting face-to-face (Uhls et al., 2014).  Professor Patricia Greenfield, who co-authored the study, said:  “Many people are looking at the benefits of digital media in education, and not many are looking at the costs.  Decreased sensitivity to emotional cues — losing the ability to understand the emotions of other people — is one of the costs.  The displacement of in-person social interaction by screen interaction seems to be reducing social skills.”

The study tested two groups of sixth-grade students at how well they could judge facial emotions in pictures and videos.  One group then went off to the Pali institute — a nature and science camp near Los Angeles — for five days.  At the camp, the children weren’t allowed to use any electronic devices, while the other group went about their normal, everyday lives.  It was quite a change for those children who attended the Pali Institute as the usual amount of time they spent texting, watching TV and playing video games was 4.5 hours per day — and that was on a typical school day. After five days at the Institute, the children’s ability to read facial emotions improved tremendously in comparison to those who’d had their electronic devices for the week.

The number of errors they made on the test reduced by around one-third.  Yalda Uhls, who was the study’s lead author, said:  “You can’t learn nonverbal emotional cues from a screen in the way you can learn it from face-to-face communication.  If you’re not practicing face-to-face communication, you could be losing important social skills. We are social creatures. We need device-free time.”

Good advice for us all, I’m sure, children and adults alike. 

Memories...

This term, Jamie's class have been doing about 'Celebrations' and all parents were asked to send in a baby photograph to put on the wall.  Jamie's teachers also put up photographs from their weddings and other events and so I thought it would be nice to email a photograph of our wedding.

Jamies teacher sent back the following email:

Thank you so much, Jamie shared a little bit about being the page boy and holding the rings. I have put his memory on the board so it will be lovely to have the photograph next to it too!

Many thanks,