Well, we’re approaching the end of my son’s first year at school, and what have we learned?

We’ve learned that the school has a good sense of “community” and loads of people like to chip in when they have events and suchlike to raise money. We’ve learned that the school has an active anti-bullying policy (although fortunately we’ve learned this from the school publicising it, rather than us ending up needing to use it).

We’ve also learned that my five year old is enjoying his karate: after two terms of doing karate one hour a week, he’s had his first grading and now has an orange belt. And this despite (I think) being physically the smallest in the group — there are only a few others from the reception year, and I think those are all bigger.

Of course, he needs to practice more as it’s difficult getting him to run through his kata at home, but I think starting a martial art out early will help his physical fitness and condition, and we’ll support him as long as he wants to go along with it. I would say he could be the next Bruce Lee, but given the fact that he quite fancies the idea of being an actor, and can be a bit of a clown at times, maybe Jackie Chan is more likely…

And at school he seems to be progressing well: his reading and writing are progressing steadily, and I think he’s making good progress, with maths, IT and general class discussions seeming to be a particular strong point. Although his school report suggests that perhaps in discussions he doesn’t let other people take their turns often enough and will dominate discussions if they let him — I can’t think where he gets that from.

But his class have put together an assembly for the rest of the school — and the parents’ of reception children — to watch. This started off initially with the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which was split amongst the children, with them each having something different to say.

BTP was the first to speak in the assembly, with:

Welcome to reception’s concert. Today we are going to tell you the story of the Very Hungry CaterpillarBTP

What I was really impressed by was the fact that neither he — nor the majority of the other kids — seemed nervous or fazed at all about performing in front of an audience which must have consisted of at least 100. Once the caterpillar’s story was told, the call then told what they had learned and done in the year — counting, how to spell (using ’shop’ and ‘cat’ as the examples), that they had learned about animals, and then something or other I didn’t quite catch about dragons (Chinese New Year, possibly?)

Anyway, the children then disappeared behind various dragon masks, some holding on to each other’s backs, with the traditional up-and-down sort of dancing movement I always associate with the Chinese New Year dragons. What I was particularly impressed with though was that these weren’t just the bog-standard dragon masks you see at this this sort of thing, but actually enabled the children to breathe huge gouts of fire.

What? You don’t believe me? Just look at this…

Now if that isn’t a fire-breathing dragon, I really don’t know what is.

Of course, at this time I would urge you to disregard any notion that this was put together with some kind of photo editing jobbie. For example, some people might suggest that the fire is very much like the fire in this picture by luc viatour, but I am sure anyone sufficiently credulous would accept that any resemblance between the two is entirely coincidental.

So, karate chops, school reports and a fire-breathing dragon. Oh, and some reading, writing and stuff as well. Quite an interesting first year all told, I believe…