Weekend Book Madness

Making memories and actually putting them on paper!

Rosie started at the nursery within the school she will be going to back in September 2017. We thought she was going to have to make the transition anyway, so we might as well do it as early as possible and it was the best decision, she loves it (this probably warrants its own blog post). Anyway, as part of the continued learning program and continuity between home and school she has a weekend adventure book (I assume this is why we have it), I love this idea. Working in nursery you would always ask the children what they’d been up to at the weekend and rarely get a response, so I can see how the book can be conversation opening and encourage the children to talk about home life. Wanting to make a good impression and wanting to show that I’m a willing parent, invested in my child’s education, I really jumped on board with this, taking photos and writing a little story from Rosie’s point of view about her weekend and the things we’d done. Obviously, this takes a fair amount of commitment and is quite time consuming, but I didn’t mind, that’s what being a stay at home mum is about.... right? I didn’t actually realise what I’d started with this..... Rosie absolutely loves it, she asks to see her weekend book and we discuss the things in there and we look back over previous weeks and she remembers things we’ve done. She walks into school holding it on a Monday with such pride and I’m informed by her teachers that she asks her friends to come and look at it. So I’m now thinking on a Monday about next weekends story and trying to prepare what we will be doing. At first I thought this was crazy, what have I started, how can I constantly come up with new things and then I realised that actually this is something to be embraced and enjoyed. Rosie is a little sponge and coming out with new things all the time. A couple of weekends ago she asked about a wind sock at the local airport (which she thought was a carrot) so we turned it into a massive learning experience about windsocks which concluded in us making one and taking it to school on Monday to show her friends. She and I really enjoyed it, we spent valuable time together and she is still telling people about her wind sock. We also have to drive home past the ‘carrot windsock’ everyday (it isn’t really out of the way!). I feel we have made a precious memory here and she learned something that has really sunken in. She also made pizza with Daddy and was looking at the photos telling Nanny what she’d put on her pizza. I find this all amazing and am now thankful for the weekend book. We just completed our first book and I was so delighted when the school photocopied it and gave me the original one back, inadvertently we have started and maintained a little diary that we can keep forever! How precious. Just before Christmas a certificate award was stuck in the weekend book from school saying how wonderful it was and I felt a little tinge of pride for ‘our achievements’ (I’m aware that me being so delighted by a teacher award with mine and Rosie’s name on it is probably a little bit sad!). Rosie's teachers are all so wonderful at showing the same enthusiasm as she does (actually we do) about the weekend book and I think this motivates her and encourages her inclination to do it. She really is at the phase where she likes to please her teachers and she talks none stop about them, like they are her friends and I can see her looking for praise when she has done something she is proud of. Rosie’s teachers write little speech bubbles about comments she makes when they go through her book and I love reading them when I get her book back on a Wednesday. I can imagine her saying the things on the bubbles and it’s great that she so openly talks about these things. People tell me all the time that I need to savour and enjoy the girls whilst they are so young. How many of us have heard ‘they aren’t babies for long’. We live in a world where capturing photos and videos has never been easier. I’m not afraid to admit I have about 13 thousand photos on my phone. They are special to me, but what am I actually ever going to do with them? The weekend book has made me print some off and document them, every week! It’s amazing to me how something seemingly so trivial can become so precious and important. I will continue to enjoy telling Rosie’s story, as much as she does and continue making this little scrap book of her early years, the years

that people tell me are so precious...... my only dread is what will I do when Lydia starts and I have to do two!?