Plasticine rainbows & rock bugs... it's half term, not an acid trip.

It's the first day of half term. In fact it's only 11am and already we've had our electricity meter changed for a nice new digital one, made rock bugs, plasticined a rainbow, secretly devoured some chocolate crispies before breakfast, and played trains. They've only been up 2 and a half hours! How am I going to fill the rest of the week????

Aaaahhhhhhhh................... crap.

The Mummy Project

I used to live in a giant Rice Krispies box.

Cross my heart and hope to die, but as of today I swear that I am NEVER going to do my children's projects for school ever again.

Yesterday I heard in the playground that the 'house' project was due in today, and when I asked her teacher about it, it turned out that either we hadn't been given a letter about it, or Orla had lost it. The teacher helpfully suggested that 'we' give it a bash anyway. Orla on the way home started wailing that she HAD  to have something to take in, as she COULDN'T be the only one without a house. Scouring the internal Pinterest boards of my brain, I figured we could rustle something up relatively quickly using a cereal box, and if I couldn't find my paints (still in one of the many boxes in the living room) then we would use the emulsion we're using to paint the house. Easiest building to make? - Berlin apartment block.

Unfortunately, I still had a lot of de-siliconing to do on the shower cubicle which I had propped upside down in the spare bedroom, and Orla had to do a piece of writing about her house, so time allocated to the making of the model was an hour. Squidged in between the writing part and the completion of the making of dinner. But of course, Orla started getting tired and distracted and very quickly the writing was abandoned, and I got left with the making of the house.

Let me just say, it is so much harder to make something that looks like it has been made by a 5 year old. (And I doubt any 5 year old would have the patience to be bothering with 27 windows) And I am vowing that I will never do it again. I could see that a lot of mothers had also been up late making houses, but when I was at school I never thought that was fair, especially as I had parents who weren't very good at this sort of thing. Anyway, I will do all the fancy dress costumes and such that are required of me, but that's it.

But it's so hard to say "Tough - you either get on with it, or you have nothing to take in" when there's a wee sad face looking at you in the rear view mirror.

What's your view on mothers doing their kids projects/homework?

Derbyshire welcomes careful scholars

Ta-da! Absolutely no prizes for guessing that we're going* to be moving, not to Derby, but to Derbyshire. Forgive me for not being more specific, but as yet I'm not sure where exactly we'll be living, and also, much as I like you all, the illicit pretzel factory I'll be operating from my kitchen needs to remain just that. Can't have the police turning up to drag you lot away from peering through my windows while I am trying to produce enough pretzels a day to keep my little German's happy.

I managed to get the kids places at a school deemed 'satisfactory' by Ofsted. but I quite happy with that, as a friend of mine has her son there and they are all very happy with it. I'm never 100% convinced entirely by Ofsted reports. Schools and nurseries have enough advance warning of inspectors coming that they have time to brush up their act. On top of that if any points are highlighted they are told what they are and when the inspector will be coming back to see if they've sorted it out. Shouldn't be too hard to sort it out, but then again...

Mind you I am basing these views on the nursery reports, I think the schools take into account levels of achievement, so it's not that easy. Even so, a friend went through all the Ofsted reports, chose a nursery based on that, the (high) cost, and a visit, where she inspected how clean the toy boxes were, and still ended up removing her child after a while because they were feeding her 9 month old baby giant chocolate muffins and hotdogs, and leaving him sitting in filthy nappies for hours on end until official nappy changing time. So you can't always tell.

Anyway, I was happy with the decision and happy with the school and then...

Someone told us about another school which might have places. Kind of out in the middle of nowhere, very small, and outstanding according to what we've heard. And so, we now have 2 new school places where the kids will start in December, and now things feel really right. I have reignited my loving relationship with Rightmove and have been pre-browsing houses for rent in a giant radius surrounding this school. I'm struggling a bit with Britain's love of pattern - there are an awful lot of wallpapers for rent that would make your eyes bleed. Still, awesome fun!


* That's if nothing else changes between now and then, and who knows, it probably will.

(And yes, these photos have nothing to do with the content of the post, but we were at the Berlin Air Show yesterday.)

The one where I can't get my kids into any local school

"You'll find that everything's changed while you've been away". Fool that I am, I wasn't quite sure that that would be the case. I read that quote in an article about the perils of repatriation. Turns out, after an initial toe dip into 'sorting' things out for our return, I discover that in fact things have changed quite a lot and in ways we never thought would affect us. Let me tell you a story...

We have a house in Derby. A house in a nice area that we chose because we liked it, the area, and the schools round about it. We fully intended giving our tenant notice that we would be moving back, but then I spent a morning on the phone to various local schools and the local council to see where I might get school places for Orla and Hamish. Let's just say, I hadn't foreseen it being as problematic. I started off by phoning the school I would prefer them to go to, which told me that they were fully subscribed. Then I phoned the council to see where there might be places locally, and was told there *might* be a place in Reception for Hamish, but not one in year 1 for Orla in one of the schools near our house in Derby. This particular school was bottom of my list in preference, but I have heard that it has improved a bit.

So I thought I might as well phone the school and see whether they *might* have a place for Orla too. Ugh! Nothing. Not for year 1 and not for reception either. The school told me they were having 90 kids starting in Reception which kind of shocked me. I was flummoxed: not a single school place in Reception class across 4 schools in our area of Derby? That's over 300 places! Let me just say that when I was walking around a few years ago with Hamish in the pram, the place was not teeming with babies the same age as him.

In fact, before we left for Germany I phoned the education department to get an understanding of what we would need to do to get the kids into school on our return. I was told that we might not get our first choice but that we would definitely get our catchment school. In fact, it wouldn't be a problem. Hmm.... And now everything has changed.

And at the end of a long morning on the phone I had in front of me the following options:

A) move back to our house and send the kids to two different schools (there are/were only 5 with places in Reception across the whole city) in different corners of the city.
B) move back to our house and send them both to the same school - of the 5 schools mentioned above, 2 also had places for Orla in year 1. Both of these schools are special needs schools.
C) move back to our house and send them to private school. I would need to get a job before our return that would allow me to fund this.
D) move out of the area into Derbyshire, as opposed to Derby, where the problem is less acute.
E) forget all of the above, and stay in Berlin which would require taking both kids out of their current school, putting them back into Kita and hoping with fingers crossed that both could get places in the bilingual school with Orla starting in 2013 and Hamish in 2014.

So what would you do?

And why am I unable to send my children to any of our local schools? According to the local council their has been a baby boom. A baby boom which wasn't apparent 3 years ago in our area. According to someone else I spoke to in the council the problem is down to immigration. A bit of Googling on the 'lack of primary school places in England' brings back lots of newspaper reports agreeing with this. And the more you tell people that you can't get your kids into school when you return, the more you hear stories of people who have found themselves in similar situations. What's going on?

And what do you think we have chosen? Answers on a postcard in the comments please!



http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/31/primary-school-places-your-stories
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9138541/Warning-over-acute-shortage-of-primary-school-places.html#

School begins. Bye, bye, baby!

5 years doesn't take long does it?

In fact, forgive me (especially any of you who might be child-free) for a moment while I do that thing like old people who go on about how once you get old the years just fly by. I feel old today. Hamish has gone off to school, and that's both my babies all grown-up---ish and at school, and it seems so fast and like it was only yesterday I was mopping the sick from my hair, shoulders, back, sofa, cushions, floor that my lovely refluxey babies produced endlessly as a sign of their love for me, and now look:

Stevie laughed at his little black socks and his little 'suit-like' trousers, just like daddy - though Daddy would turn up his nose at an outfit with such a high polyester percentage!

For Orla it was a thoroughly exciting day, as she got to show off her wee brother and feel more grown up now she's in year 1, and also she had her Schultute ceremony. I had assumed that it would be first thing in the morning as parents were expected to present the Schultute, but as I gave up on plowing through my emails from my week away, I missed the email which told me that it was going to be at lunch time. Which was a bit of a bugger as I can't get to the school at that time and Stevie couldn't take time off work. So there's my first parental fail of the academic year!

The photo therefore comes courtesy of one of the other mums.

The German Schoolbags

Never before have I seen such beautiful school bags...ahem.

Now if you remember, once apon a time I had a little ponder over German school bags & their general lack of appeal, weight, size, blah, blah. I couldn't understand why something so ugly could cost so much. Then you helpful readers enlightened me to the world of the Schulranzen and of lists that German schools supply with regulation stationary that *must* be bought and used. Turns out that for quite a lot of money, many people are happy not to have to shop around for coloured pencils and pass holders if they come included in the ugly schoolbag.

Well, guess what? I've very nearly gone and bought the darn things. Nearly, but not quite. It all came about as a result of both kids feet getting bigger. Seriously. Last year I bought Orla a cute little backpack from M&S that basically covered her needs (P.E. kit, packed lunch, occasional additional items) and she took her swimming kit in a different swim bag. It was pretty perfect. And then her feet kept growing, and growing. And all of a sudden towards the end of last term the girl with the biggest feet in the class (of which she is very proud) can barely fit her trainers in her bag along with her packed lunch. Hamish needless to say is only a size or two behind her.

My plan was to wait until we went to the UK before doing a giant school shopping trip which would include school bags for both Orla & Hamish (who will be starting Reception in September), but when looking online most of the kids rucksacks I've seen have been the same size as the one Orla had last year. And then, one day, I was walking through Karstadt and saw the perfect sized rucksack.

Today, I bit the bullet and bought two Scout VI rucksacks. Scout is one of the main players in the whole Schulranzen game. These though are perfect for smaller children who don't have to carry a million thigs with them everyday. Hamish chose a dinosaur design, and is thoroughly pleased with the mesh pockets at the side where he can keep a juice cup, and Orla eventually settled on a butterfly design (it was between that and a unicorn design). So there you go, give me a couple of years, and I'll be transferring them into a German school and walloping great big ugly Schulranzen on their backs, saying, "Aren't they lovely?" as my inner German finally emerges.

The going rate for these smaller rucksacks is 33 Euros each, but you can find them online from prices as low as 19 Euros. I found an online retailer with good prices called Ranzen-Berlin which just so happens to be nearish us, as in we walked for what felt like ages from Rathaus Steglitz U-Bahn station in a thunderstorm to get there but they had absolutely loads of choice and tons of regulation stationary (evident by the people wandering round with lists) and had a massive selection of Schultuten too including ones which matched the school bags!

Links:
Scout website
Scout VI rucksack patterns
Ranzen-Berlin (a really good shop if you're in Berlin, but also good online prices)

School's out for summer!

The school year: September 2011 - July 2012

What a year! It seems like hardly any time at all since Orla started school, and now here we are, Reception year done and dusted. I tried to get her to pose the way she had on her first day, but there was no chance. Apart from the fact that she has just about completely outgrown that little hanky of a skirt and tiny polo top; the big difference is that she is well and truly knackered. A year at school takes it out of you. I'm not sure exactly how much she has learnt, but her reading is coming along really well, and I think she has a natural ability for maths (like her dad) when she's not busy talking non-stop (like her mum).

Looking at her, it seems at first that she hasn't changed. But she's so much taller, her legs are bruised and bashed to bits from tripping over in the forest, her fringe has *almost* grown out, and her feet are at least 2 sizes bigger. In this past year she's learned how to swim, how to cycle, her knowledge of society and the world has grown, and she's been to some really awesome parties! She's starting slowly to come out of her German-despising shell, and she's made some really good friends.

I've been looking forward to the school holidays. I've been needing some nice long Orla time, just to enjoy her company. I'm saying this now because I know that in a few weeks I will be banging on the door of the school begging them to open and take the wild animals off my hands.

And of course, this year I can also beg them to take Hamish too! He cannot wait to start!

Schultüte: a very rough guide

Prepare for an assault on your eyes. For it's Schultüte time. These mystified me when we first arrived in Germany, I couldn't work out what they might be for, and didn't know then even what they were called. I assumed they were for putting children's presents in, but they seemed such an awkward unusable shape for most things that I couldn't see how that concept would have taken off. The last year with Orla starting school I was told that she should have one to bring with her on her first day, though it turned out that in actual fact she doesn't need one until this year. So, while I blind you with garish colour, here's the low-down on them.

Make your own with supplies from Idee (though you can end up spending more doing it this way)

So reliable old Wikipedia says "When children in Germany and Austria set off for their first day in school upon entering first grade, their parents and/or grandparents present them with a big cardboard cone, prettily decorated and filled with toys, chocolate, candies, school supplies, and various other goodies. It is given to children to make this anxiously awaited first day of school a little bit sweeter."


And there you have it. If you are a novice at Schultüte-filling, then you might be wary of buying school supplies to go in it, as most German school have regulations regarding the equipment your child should have for school, and will supply you with a list of items plus the brands that they should be. However, you'll also find that most places that sell Schultüten rather handily have lots of the regulation school supplies right next to them. Bonus! It's quite good fun putting together a Schultüte, and I think it's a lovely tradition that I would love to take back to the UK. I thoroughly enjoyed buying little toys, and paint brushes, and novelty erasers, and coloured pencils when I did it last year. It's like a mid-year Christmas stocking. Though you may want to take some medicinal salts with you on this shopping trip when you clock the price of coloured pencils and those kids paint sets, and realise you're going to have to deny yourself that nice top from Esprit you saw from the escalator on the way up.

The selection at Karstadt, from tiny to huge, mostly all with recognisable characters and brands on them.

 Size: Does it matter? Who knows. I think it probably does. Last year the school's instruction was not to buy the utterly massive ones. So I didn't. And when we turned up on day one and saw the kids going in with their Schultüten, we could see that that advice was 99% ignored. A Swiss friend of ours here says that it should be the "size of the child". Hmmm... if you know more about this please advise in the comments below, but I can't help but think that given the range of sizes available, it's probably not so much of a big deal.

Stuck for ideas? You can even buy books of ideas for girls ones and boys ones, and you can't go wrong with a mountain of crepe paper. Well, no, you probably can. Especially where glitter glue is concerned.

 Cost: I've seen some big ones in Kaufland (the supermarket) for Euros 3.99, and they look ok. I also thought Karstadt were pretty reasonable. The medium sized Spiderman one that Hamish wants (in the second photo from top) was Euros 3.99. The large ones with generic unicorns and pirates and things on are as you'd expect cheaper than the Hot Wheels, or Barbie, or Disney Princess ones which cost around 10 Euros. You'll find the Princess Lillifee & Cap'n Sharkey ones are priced just a little bit higher just to piss you off.

Of course, given that we've learned over the course of the year that what school is really all about is testing your ability as a mother to undertake endless creative projects against the clock, you might as well get some practise in and make your own. No, it won't save you any money, but it will teach your child the lesson 'If you want something doing well, you might as well do it yourself'. If they don't like your ideas they can do it themselves. It'll be hours of creative fun, and you'll finally be able to get rid of that rug you hate, because it's going to get ruined with glitter glue.

Anyway, I'm off-topic. The big basic cardboard cones in Idee cost around 4 Euros. But unless you have a stack of other materials at home, or are planning just to close your eyes and take a Sharpie to it, you'll find all that highly tempting glittery paper and the nicely packaged bits and bobs they have are going to take your spend to  way over the 10 Euro mark. Though one friend is printing Spiderman images off the internet and sticking these on which I think is a great idea. Desperate mums laugh in the face of copyright law.

Why not just go to the KaDeWe, where you'll find all the big names in Schulranzen (those awful-looking German school bags) are ready to sell you something equally ugly. (Though I thought the pink deer one by Samsonite's Sammies range was ok. 20 Euros though - is it worth it?). When you could buy a kit with all the bits to make you stay up cursing late into the night, for exactly the same price? Hmm... I think you know what I'd choose :)

If you look at the sea of DIY Schultüte supplies in Idee and feel lost with so much choice, they have kits that you can buy which contain everything you need to make a certain design. Handy, but they are super-expensive. For the same price you could take yourself (well excluding travel costs) to the KaDeWe and buy one of the branded ones that match the Schulranzen. They have ones by Samsonite, Scout, and I can't remember the other makes. These ones come in at 20 Euros. I was expecting to find some super expensive ones for sale here, but the KaDeWe has sadly let me down on this score. If you want to spend big bucks on an item which will be used for one day and then become a princess hat, then you need to take yourself to one of the little individual kids boutique shops.

Last week I was having a browse when I saw a quite lovely looking fabric-wrapped Schultüte on a shelf. It had that kind of 'Bavarian-style' thing going on with a combination of felt, gingham, and reindeer, and it was embroidered with the child's name. It was 40 Euros, which seemed a bit much even if you were going to pack it away in the loft as a childhood heirloom, given that under the fabric it's still just a cardboard cone. BUT, you're forgetting one thing: You could get ahead of the fancy dress costume making game and stay up all night replicating it with your sewing machine. It would probably only cost you about 3 euros for the fabric, and what price do you put on sleep anyway?

I mean think of how great you'll feel having stayed up half the night, on that first day of school when their little eyes alight on it, and they look into your half-shut ones and say, "But I wanted Fireman Sam...". Try and save your tears for when you see them off at the school gate.

Hey Willie Wallacky, it's International Day!

There was a wee cooper that came from Fife
Nickety nackety noo noo noo.

Jings! It's no International Day already, is it? Awa'! As much as I would like to blog in the style of The Broons or Oor Wullie, I just can't keep it up. I seem to be heading down a wee Scottish blogging vein these days. Can't be helped with International Day coming right up behind Burns Night. I didn't get the email about International Day from the school until one of the other parents started talking to me about how she was "bagsying shortbread" as her international food, and when I didn't dive in with a "No way! That's not fair!" she realised that I hadn't been informed that we were going to have to bare our Scottish roots for all to see, and unleash our spectacular(ly bad) Scottish cooking on a class of innocent tiny children.

You'd think our house would be awash in tartan breeks (trousers) and sporrans, but we appeared to be a tartan-free zone much to my horror. The quest as revealed in the forwarded email was to send your child to school in their national dress, bearing some home-made foodstuffs from their home country (enough for all to try and with a comprehensive list of ingredients supplied). Not exactly easy, but I quickly Googled 'How the hell do I make a kilt when I can barely sew', and then swiftly chucked that idea and wondered whether I could pretend we were half-Greek and just wrap her in a sheet in some approximation of a toga, and sling a can of Irn-Bru into her rucksack. And I was more than disappointed to discover that there isn't an Edinburgh Woollen Mill in every town in the world. My mother does not believe this and says there MUST be one in Berlin - God knows, there's a market for it, they like their hellish-looking knitwear here too. And by Sunday night I would have run into any one of their 6 billion UK branches, launched a bag of cash at them and bought anything that I could have squeezed Orla into.

Instead though on Saturday I had to face the awful truth that I was going to have to make something. So I decided to make life as easy as possible for myself and take them literally, for I made her a national dress. My process leaves a lot to be desired. There were no patterns involved; just a lot of freehand drawing on the fabric (which I couldn't help thinking would make lovely cushions) with my expensive artists pastels (I appear to be lacking dressmakers chalk, but anyway, pastels come in much prettier colours) and confident if mis-judged cutting.

By Sunday, I had most of a smashing tartan dress that even Houdini would struggle to get on and off. Using my best imagination I decided I would construct *something* using multiple pieces of elastic and buttons that would have enough 'ping!' about it that a 4 year old could get all their wobbly awkward limbs through. I thought it was going to be a work of genius; there were moments when it was starting to look like something you could patent, and then after one shoulder contraption was finished I tried it on the reluctant model again and realised it looked crap. Plan S (by this point) was sew it up, hide the mess of elastic, and work on having one shoulder strap open with a button. I saved that until last night. Which was also the point I had saved to learn how to use the automatic button-holer on my sewing machine. 2 hours later I had it! Wey hey! Go me!

I daren't even tell you how badly the making of the potato scones went. Pity the poor wee kiddies having to eat them....

*UPDATE*
We were able to collect my mum's parcel from the Post Office today that was meant to save my bacon. Alas, it was too late for Orla, but at least I have a very happy boy!

Help ma boab, Hamish! Yer roots are showing!

Michty me! Some links:
DC Thompson shop (publisher of The Broons & Oor Wullie)
How to make a kilt
Scotland's other National Drink - Irn-Bru

Before every party, I Google my guests

The spy who went out in the snow.

Ssssshhhhhh..... the neighbours might be listening!

There are moments when I think that it would have been wise to have thought about this whole blog thing prior to starting it off. At times I have my regrets that I have used my own name and used photos of myself and the kids and all that malarky, and obviously if I had done that I could talk about anything I like without worrying about people I know either Googling me and finding out things about me that I wouldn't really want them to know, and I could have a good old moan about all the people who thoroughly annoy me, and I could talk about other things that I'd like to talk about but which I am rather reticent to because I want to keep some things a little more private.

But I didn't. And it's not that big a deal really. Sometimes though there are little moments when people say things to me and I jolt thinking, "How did you know that?". Sometimes I am surprised by the people I know from real life who read my blog. It's never who I think it would be.

Last night I spent some time trying to find out how strangers see my 'timeline' on Facebook. That was a whole lot of not much fun. For yesterday afternoon we went to a New Year/New Baby/New Neighbours party (yes, really, it was 3 times the fun) downstairs in our building. And about 30 minutes after we arrived the hostess and I had the opportunity to chat for a bit and her opening line was "I know your daughter is at the British School, but your looking at ###### School, aren't you?".

I couldn't help but be shocked and ask "How did you know that?". There was a slight pause and then she gave me an answer which didn't really answer my question, and eventually took it off topic. I could have pressed her, but my brain had already bolted back upstairs and was logging into Blogger, searching posts for references to this. It was just my body that was locked into being polite, and stayed drinking coffee for a while longer, and comparing apartment sizes with the rest of the neighbours.

For there is no way that this woman should know this. I haven't mentioned my plans to any of my neighbours, and I don't believe that we share any friends that would have mentioned this fact. So, the first thing I did once we got home after stopping Orla from crying, getting Hamish a drink, making the dinner, getting the kids ready for bed and settling Hamish down, was check out my blog and when I found no reference there, I checked Facebook. And then I considered that the apartment might be bugged. (Which led to some really bad dreams)

So, I might be a little more cagey about what's happening with us and our staying/going/relocating plans for a while. At least until things are little more settled.... and I have checked the lightswitches for tiny microphones.

Laterne, laterne, or the one where Stevie buys us a house-pony

Like he cares how many trees I cut out...

It's Laterne Fest time again. Seems like hardly any time at all since I was last coated with a fine layer of PVA and glitter, but here we are again. Last year it was all a bit of a mystery to me. I had no idea who St. Martin was or what exactly the celebration was meant to entail. All I knew was that I was told to make two lanterns out of cardboard and tissue paper and anything else that I could find that was highly flammable, insert two burning tealights, and set my children loose, swinging them and whacking each other until every last hair on their heads and eyebrow was burnt off. Fortunately, I had just misunderstood, and what I was actually being asked to buy was a 'Leuchtstaebchen' - which is a tiny light bulb on a stick powered by batteries and often with some kind of flashing mechanism. (Also doubles as a weapon/switch in the hands of a toddler, so you'll be able to coordinate your body glitter with the bruises across your knees and thighs).

Of course if you are embracing integration into German life with gusto, you can buy a 'traditional' kit and with a "Viel Spass!" to your toddling 2 year old flame-swinger, cast aside all your UK/USA Health & Safety ingrained paranoia. The irony of course is that your decidedly-non-German child will expose you as the hapless foreigner as they wander around setting light to all the other kids lanterns as they bash them together. So I would probably recommend spending an extra Euro or two and getting one with a bulb.

As regard the lantern itself, well you have 3 choices. You can buy one ready-made (most tend to look like paper ball-type lightshades with pictures printed on them); you can join all the mummies at Kita and make on on the day of your Kita's Laternefest (I have heard that it is normally a far more civilised affair at other Kita's, but it's a real 'elbow-sharpening' event at ours where there can be nearly 100 parents squeezed into a small room at a time all desperately snatching the nicest bits of paper); or you can make one in the relative peace and calm with or without child input.

In actual fact my greatest concern last year was not that there was a possibility of my children inadvertently setting the Kita alight, but that I didn't know what the 'theme' was meant to be. I assumed that all the lanterns should be decorated with let's say pumpkins or something representing the occasion, but it's a freestyle decorating event. Last year I made both Orla & Hamish's lanterns though they chose the materials. Hamish went for some lovely translucent flame printed paper that I thought would be hideous, but actually worked quite well. They also chose sparkly coloured card which I used to cut out the letters of their names - as I was clueless on the theme thing I decided to go 'neutral' in case ballerinas and tigers were a real no-no.

This year my work is greatly reduced as Orla is making her lantern at school. Hamish is interested in making a lantern as far as choosing the materials and giving the odd bit of art direction goes. He chose a black lantern frame with blue translucent paper, and green holographic sticky-backed paper. I was worried by my eh... creative limitations with the black on blue thing (I considered 'bruises' as a theme), but I decided on making it a dark sky with a green holographic forest and I am adding some foxes and a moon. Hamish heartily approves. Phew. I've started on it, but I have until next week to get it finished and I am bored of cutting out trees already.

Orla's Laternefest is this evening. Sadly, I don't think I can go as I already had plans for tonight. So Stevie will get to do his first Laternefest with Orla & Hamish. I was looking forward to it as well, especially after I did a double-take on the school newsletter which says "If the weather is kind the event will be held outside. There will be sausages and hot chocolate available after our lantern-lit walk through the woods. In order to cover the cost of the ponies we will have to ask for donations on the night.". Do you think we get one to keep? Or will we be eating horsey-sausages???

Links:
Info on St Martin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin%27s_Day)
Idee Laterne supplies (http://www.idee-shop.de/shop/index.php?page=vt_findologic&keywords=Laterne)
Songwords to 'Laterne, Laterne' - lower down they have the full song in both German & English (http://www.mamalisa.com/?p=444&t=es)

We don't need no education...yet

Warning: This post is quite long and honestly, is possibly only of interest to ex-pats in Berlin who have children below school age.

This week is Berlin's school application week for all the little children due to start school in September 2012. And to be honest I never thought that I would need to be bothering with school options in Berlin - given that I was gently told which school Orla would go to, but in the past few weeks a number of things have happened that suddenly jolted me out of my blissful ignorance, and set me on a trail of investigation on this very subject.

First off, we have been talking about whether on not we will be in Berlin next September. Stevie has floated the idea of having his contract extended to his boss given that budgets will be decided in the near future, but we have heard that you don't tend to hear if you have had your contract extended until very nearly the last minute. As in, a months notice or less. The hope is that you'll crumble early and take a local contract. But we are very much still undecided about our future here. And school is becoming the number one deciding factor in that decision.

If we don't get an extension, and decide to stay then Orla needs a new school. I had thought of that and casually thought 'oh well, I guess I will just take her along to the Nelson Mandela school and get her in there'. Patently, I am very naiive. I haven't been through the school application process in the UK before but I had heard it can be pretty nerve-wracking, but somehow I just thought it would be less problematic here in Germany. Especially as the school of my choosing is a bilingual school - how many people would honestly be needing that? I think the current figure is kazillions.

I met up with a friend for an early morning beer in the top floor bar or the KaDeWe. The beer it became apparent was essential as she told me of her sleepless nights worrying about whether or not she'd be able to get her child into a school in Berlin. By the end of our conversation I was a bundle of nerves (especially as the application window was to start before we got back from our October break) and all of a sudden the poster in the lift at Kita heralded information I knew I just had to be able to read and understand before it got me to the 4th floor. In fact, I considered stealing it to translate at my leisure, but it would have poked out of my bag, so they would have had me pegged as the Schulanfanger Poster Dieb before the half term holiday even started.

Luckily for me I found it on the internet as I was Googling like mad to find out what I needed to do. It's a good place to start if you need information on what you need to do. But here's my guide to applying for bilingual schools in Berlin.

1. School Open Days start in October and these are useful to get a feel for the school and it's culture if nothing else. You can also learn more about the application process from the staff. Most of the Open Days are scheduled before the registration process starts, but funnily enough, occasionally they are slap bang in the middle of the registration period. Why? Nobody knows.There are theories but who can say...
2. You should (not) expect a registration  form through your door about now. I say 'not', as quite a few people have told me that their registration forms arrived too late and they just went to the school regardless during the registration week to register their child.  
3. You need to find out what your catchment school is. I hadn't a clue. And after a long search I eventually found a page where I could enter my street and postcode and it told me. And now I can't find that page again...but I will if it kills me!
4. If, like me, you failed to go to any Open Days, you could in theory have a look to see what people on ToyTown Berlin are saying. But, it's a bit frightening. Honestly, I probably wouldn't look if I were you. I looked and then I didn't sleep very well. Admittedly, you probably wouldn't sleep very well after reading the thread on where you could find American beer in this city, but that's Toytown for you. There's a market right there for a Toytown Berlin Anger Management course.
5. The best thing I have found is to speak to people: kids in the park, parents at parties, friends of friends - it's actually quite a small expat world out there, and there's bound to be someone who has kids at the school you want your kid to go to. You hear good stuff and bad stuff of course: someone stopped us outside a cafe in the summer and warned us that we should never send our kids to JFK as unless we were with the US Embassy our kids would be treated as second class citizens. On the other hand there's a German woman I know whose son has started there and he loves it. Can't say anything against the place. Everything about it is fantastic. And the same goes for all the schools. You have to just make a decision and go with it.
6. Registration: So then what you need to do is go to your local Grundschule where you would register your child if you wanted them to just go to the local school. But, if like us, you feel that your child needs to be in a bilingual school then you need to ask for  the following: "Antrag zur Aufnahme eines Kindes in eine andere Grundschule" which is a form you need to fill out giving your reasons why you want your child to go to another school. You will still retain a place at your local school until you tell them in writing that you are not taking it up. (Though someone has told me that some of the local schools are also over-subscribed - it's a joy, isn't it?). Oh and you need to take your passport and the child's passport and your registration document (the one where you had to register into your local area) and any other relevant papers.
7. Then once you have your 'release' form completed, you then need to go to the school of you choice and register your child there. If it's a bilingual school then you need to register them (and possibly have the child tested) as either a native English speaker or as a native German speaker. And here's the rub. These schools are very popular. Hideously popular. There's no point putting more than one school in the boxes where you can list 3 options. The bi-lingual schools won't even consider your application if they are in 2nd or 3rd place. It's first choice or no choice.
8. Most of the schools have an equal split between places that are given to Germans and places that are given to native English speakers. With a maximum of 28 in a class that means there are 14 places up for grabs. And with an awful lot of Germans competing for those 14 German places and far fewer English speaking expats competing for the other places what's happening now is that German parents are training their kids up to pass the test to be classed as a native English speaker, and thus increasing their chances of a place. So, it's not just a case of turning up and thinking you'll get a place automatically. 
9. And then you wait to find out if you have been granted a place. Presumably if you don't get a place you can go on a waiting list and in the mean time your child would go to the local German Grundschule and receive 'language support'. Home-schooling is not an option even if you fancied it as it's illegal here.

Admission by birthdate: In my haste to find out all about the process I didn't read the poster correctly. Here's one thing to note. The admission criteria based on the child's birthday is different in Berlin to England. I simply assumed Orla would be going to German school next year but it runs from 1st January 2006  to 31st December 2006 births and not end of August 2006 to beginning of September 2007 as we would have in the UK. On the poster it does say that children can be enrolled with birthdays up until 31st March 2007 (which is the bit I read and the bit that would seemingly say that Orla should start school) but this is only if "your child has no need for language support.". 

And because of that, yesterday instead of running around with my German-English Dictionary and all our passports in hand, I managed to relax and was able to let out a sigh of relief that I don't have to go through this... just yet. 

We still have an issue with what we do if we want to stay and a local contract for Stevie is the only way to do that. It would mean that Orla would drop out of school and have to return to kita (nursery) for another year. And that doesn't really sit well with me given that she had a bad experience getting bullied in her German kita, so I wouldn't be happy sending her back to one to struggle with her German again which puts her in a difficult position of not being able to defend herself, and so if I then have to go into battle for a bilingual kita place and don't succeed in getting one then what do I do? Go home? Maybe. It seems odd too to take her from school where she has been learning to read and write and do maths to then put her back in a 100% play environment. I don't know that that's a bad thing, but it just seems odd to stop their learning once they've started.

H,h,h,e,e,a,a,l,l,s,s,s....C,c,c,o,o,n,n,r,r,a,a,n,n,n.....

This month we're reading....literally. At the weekend Orla read her first words. We'd been talking about phonics at school and then she picked up a copy of Living etc and started sounding out some of the words on the cover. And it all started with the 'for' in 'Go for bold'. Talk about thrilled? I was over the moon!

Man, I was sure she was going to be a 'heat' reader as well. But I guess we'll start on the Miss Gray's Interiors Reading Programme for Young Ladies. Once we've mastered 'Living etc/Elle Decoration', we'll take it to the stage two, 'World of Interiors/Wallpaper', and finally ramp it up with intensive study of 'Architectural Digest'.

As for the photo above, this is Orla just home from school, having discarded her uniform and clutching September's Living etc which she took to school with her in her bag to demonstrate to her teacher. I had to put a hand to my eyes when she told me that she'd told her teacher that I was 'so proud of her for reading my magazine'*, but hey, she still deserves the piece of celebratory cake.



*Note to self: must remember to leave some James Joyce/ Goethe/ etc lying around for the kids to pick up.

Under a bush, down memory lane

When I was in primary school there was a boy in my class who ran away from home and hid and slept in a bush for two days before being discovered. As I recall, nobody seemed particularly concerned (well, we were only about 6 or 7 at the time), and it just seemed the kind of thing that he would do, and I suppose I just thought he'd be back at school within a few days. And he was. The thing about this boy was that he was a little bit of an oddball. A bit of a loner, a bit of a loser, didn't really talk much, oh, and often turned up to school wearing his pyjamas under his uniform. That's the bit that sticks in my head, and that's why I can totally recall this boy and his name and where he lived and what he looked like. Unlike most of the people I went to primary school with, I would probably recognise this guy if I saw him in the street.

Without ever having consciously thought it, I suppose I have always wanted to make sure I never had a kid like this boy. I have no idea what his home life was like, I just assumed it was the same as mine. Normal. But who knows. I wouldn't have known at that age what might have been going on at home, and maybe things can't be ok if you feel the need to go and hide in a bush for a couple of days. I've been thinking about this boy a bit and wondering what he's doing now. (He's not on FB so maybe he's got more of a life than me).

Yesterday Orla came home from school missing her school sweatshirt which I discovered was in with all her soaking wet swimming things. According to her, her teacher told her to put it in there. Not anything at all to do with the fact that she hates wearing it because it's too big. Anyway, peeking out at the top of her polo shirt I caught sight of a pink t-shirt. My automatic reaction was to assume that we must be into 'hinting season': where teachers and Kita careworkers drop subtle hints to me to tell me that my kids aren't wearing anywhere near enough clothes. 'Bugger!' I thought. Is it that time already?

On closer inspection, it became apparent that it wasn't the teacher dropping hints, but in actual fact her father quite possibly being asleep when he started dressing her. For Orla was wearing her Minnie Mouse pyjama top underneath her school uniform. Oh the shame!! It wouldn't have been quite so bad except that she'd had swimming so there was definitely someone who saw it, but most often it's not the actual class teacher that takes them to the swimming pool. So to top it off Orla decided that she would like to show her teacher her Disney Princess knickers (as you do) so I can be pretty certain that she saw her pyjamas too. Oh, the double shame! Eek! Incidentally, her teacher said 'Nice...'. Though I would have thought a 'Wow! Cool! I've got those too! Gleiche!' would have been more appropriate.

And now I am wondering whether the boy in my class who sometimes wore his pyjamas under his uniform maybe just had to dress himself or had a really tired father.

Wake Mummy up before you go go.

 The day before school. Opening the Schultüte. 

 Modelling the Schultüte. Maybe I should have stuck the little boats on the other way up to make it more 'wearable'.

 This was meant to be her 'first day of school' photo, but there was too much dancing for joy for me to get a good one.

Arriving at school, deliriously happy at the prospect of driving lessons.

The big day is here at last. Orla's first day at school. Can you see how happy she is to be in the midst of English speakers? Thrilled! That's putting it mildly. I hope that it's everything that she imagines it will be. And if it is, then by the time she gets home not only will they have thrown her a special party to celebrate the fact that she is a "real princess" (Dora the Explorer's words, not mine), but they will have taught her how to drive. Which will be really handy, as it's an extraordinary long journey to get to school on the school bus and back.

The bus picked her up at 7:30 this morning. Or rather 7:31 as he pointed out to me on his watch. I had thought of going on the bus with her on the first few days to make sure she wasn't overwhelmed by the whole experience, but I'd been told that there would be a teacher on the bus and she would be fine. So, instead we all got into the car a little bit later and went to the school to meet her at the other end. They didn't arrive until nearly 9am, which seems like a long time to be on a bus getting to school. Especially when you have the same thing at the end of the day and won't get home until 4:50pm.

I'm expecting her to be utterly exhausted when she gets home. She's never been to nursery or Kita for this many hours, so she won't be used to it. Nor is she used to getting up at 6:30am. She generally likes to rise some time after 8 and have a leisurely breakfast. It was a bit shattering for all of us quite honestly. Especially as Hamish hasn't slept properly in the past 2 days and has been crying every hour of the night. Quite why, I haven't worked out yet, but there's something brewing.

Hamish of course is devastated that he's not getting to go to 'big boy's school'. I would happily send him to be honest. For all my previous uniform moans, it is a great school. So, unlike the traditional mother crying at the school gates, I was really pleased to see her so happy and excited, and anyway, Hamish was crying enough for all of us. He does understand that he's not old enough yet to go, but says it's not fair, and I said what's not fair is that they chose yellow as a major colour component in their uniform when very few people can wear it. He just nodded and cried a bit more, recognising that this was indeed the case for him.

Yesterday, we did the Schultüte presentation thing yesterday morning. I had been told that she would have to take hers to school with her on the first day and then found out last week that she wasn't. So it was nice to be able to see her opening it at home. Hamish got a little one too. His was filled with Haribo, choclate buttons, stickers, a little car, a zebra, and any other bits and bobs I could find. I rushed to make his as I suddenly realised he would go bananas seeing Orla with one, especially if it contained anything edible. As it was he was desperately jealous of her school supplies. The Schultüte is meant to contain stationary items such as pencils and pens and rulers and all that malarky along with sweets and little toys. In Orla's I put some pencils and so on, along with hair clips and bobbles that she'll need to keep her hair tidy for school, and a purse (though I doubt if she'll need that yet), a Disney Princess toy, and the same sweeties and chocolate that Hamish had in his. Both were very happy indeed - especially as the cones doubled as hats. Bonus.

So now I just need to get used to my new wake up time and avoid being a minute late for the bus and we're sorted. I have the feeling it might take me some time to get used to it. I could barely think straight this morning when I was making her packed lunch, so I hope I've not accidently packed my toast in with it. So here's to the start of school and all that it brings. And I just hope that she loves it for a long time to come.

Slightly annoyed from Berlin

I've just written an email of complaint suggestions for ...um.... service improvement to Orla's new school. As in the one she's not even started yet. Yes, I believe in starting off on a good foot! Don't think I haven't been stressing over whether she'll be in negative house points on day 1 though.

We had our appointment at the school uniform shop today. Us and everyone else. You have to collect a number when you arrive and then wait until it's your turn. When it got to us, it turned out that they only have about half of the school uniform in a size that would fit Orla. Now Orla, although small, is not unusually so. I have her GP and Kinderarzt growth charts to prove it. But nonetheless, the school shop doesn't stock her size.

I half-joked "Where are M&S when you need them!" to which I was told by a member of staff that they had previously bought school uniform from there (whether for the shop or for personal use wasn't made clear) and should order some. Now that really annoyed me. Both the school handbook and the uniform order sheet state that the uniform must be ordered through the shop. And given that it's just 4 days before Orla starts, I don't have time to get her uniform from there. If we'd had this appointment even a month ago then we could even have bought it in the UK, tried it, taken it back and exchanged it. And for a lot less money too.

Instead I felt compelled to spend 44 Euros on two skirts that are too big and which I either have to spend more money on to have them professionally adjusted or have to re-sew myself. And for that price she could have had 14 M&S skirts that do fit.

On top of that they seemed to have no navy shorts for sport left for her to even try. I was told just to go and buy some plain navy ones from somewhere else. Unless you live in Germany, you probably don't realise that this is mission impossible. Germany doesn't believe in stock replenishment (I may have mentioned my horror at this in earlier posts) and now the shops are empty of anything summery and are currently in the midst of selling fleeces, rainwear, and tights (for boys). They don't even have schoolwear as the German schools are already all back from the summer break. Handy, huh? So far I have checked 3 stores, and frankly, I had better plans for how to spend my last few days with Orla before she starts school than scouring Berlin for shorts.

There were a few other things that annoyed me like the fact that they couldn't have decided what house Orla will be in before school starts, which means I need to beg Stevie for a loan of the car just to get out there to buy a coloured t-shirt, but hey, I hate to moan....:-)

Girls Week

We're having 'Girls Week' this week. Hamish is back at Kita, and Orla and I are spending some quality time together. Mother and daughter time. We've never really been able to do too much of that, she was only 15 months when Hamish came along, and normally I have them both together and don't have much opportunity to spend one-on-one time with them.

So before she starts school I thought it would be nice if we spent some time doing some of the things that she would like to do. Admittedly, we've also had to do some things that she hasn't wanted to do, like picking up documents from the doctors and taking Hamish for his U7 tests (that's the standard age 3 tests here), but we've also gone to the cinema and saw Cars 2 in German ( and because the German schools have gone back it was easy to explain the bits that she didn't understand as we were the only ones in the cinema. And we went to an ice-cream shop, and we went shopping for art supplies and things for her schuletute, and we've done some craft projects.

And because I knew it would make her really happy, I finally got my act together and finished sewing the dress I've been making for her. It's been hanging on the outside of her wardrobe for hmm... months, so it was about time. I also managed to make a drawstring bag to hold her school tights in which was easy-peasy and I'm rather chuffed with. We've also done some baking and some craft projects, and while my house is now awash with sequins and Hama beads which keep appearing in the oddest of places (like Stevie's dinner), we've had some really good fun. If you want to see more of the bouncy bed pink dress photos then head over to fiona gray . paints.

Thou shalt not hack into the Pentagon

You know how I thought the whole thing with the German school bags was a little weird? Well, I spoke to the school administrator who told me that I didn't have to worry about having to find a list of 33 items for Orla starting school. - This only really became a concern after I found out that I can only buy her uniform about 2 days before she starts. The thought of frantically searching Berlin for specific brands of stationary the day before fills me with the same sort of joy as shopping for all my Christmas presents on Christmas Eve.

Anyway, she said that I'd start getting more info through by post with details of what I needed to get, and other vital bits of info. Today I got the first. It's a form. With a link to the school's IT policy. Which I should read and understand. Both of these things not a problem to me. I used to work in IT after all so I've read more than a few IT policies in my time.

But I've also to read the IT policy to Orla and get her to sign the form stating that she has read it and understood it's terms of use. I think that might have been the best laugh I had all day. I hope they are ok with her only signing

OrLa - as they haven't left enough room for her to sign the surname which she hasn't yet mastered.

I understand the need to have 4 year olds signing an IT policy and observing guidelines of use. I really do. We have one at home. It's quite simple: "Don't touch any of the buttons while mummy is doing online shopping".

You say "turbine", I say "turban".

After work, Stevie was telling me a little story about what they had been talking about in his German class last night.

"You know... that pain in the ass woman I was talking about, the one who has already completed A2 level but is re-doing it because she thinks she missed the grammar, but really all she's doing is taking up the teacher's time speaking German that we can't understand? Well, she was talking about the high school system and the teacher said that her mother says that it's crazy that UK kids go to high school at age 12. She says it's too late."

"Uh-huh...." (I am busy trying not to chop my fingers off while attempting to finely slice onions, so please excuse my lack of intellectual contribution)

"But surely to have your school path mapped out at 10 years old is far too soon?"

(In Germany, you are put into one of three 'streams' - based on your academic ability and I think your parents get a bit of say-so too. Hauptschule, Realschule, or Gymnasium. The Hauptschule follow the same subjects as the other 2 types of school but at a slower pace and they also teach some vocational courses too. Realschule strikes me as the middle ground, where some people go on towards vocational training afterwards and some people go on to further academic study. If you want to go to University after attending Realschule, I think you have to go to Gymnasium and study for the Abitur which is a diploma which can allow you to follow a path into university. Don't quote me though, this is just my very basic understanding that I picked up in German class.) Anyway, where was he...?

"I mean, what would have been the outcome for me in a system like that?"

"Well, I reckon they can probably tell how brainy you are by 10 years old. You'd probably have been fine."

"But when I was young I had a really crap English teacher. I was stuck with her, and maybe she would have held me back and that would determine what school I went to and my whole future at age 10!"

"Well, you went to a crap school anyway, and did really well, so...."

"Yes, but the people in the 'credit' stream got the best English teachers, and the people like me in 'foundation/general' level got the crap teachers...." (lost in thought)

"Yes, maybe, but that's not universal. In my school I know that there were equally good teachers teaching foundation level English as were teaching credit level English."

".... I'm sure I should have been in a higher English class. Man, she really was just crap. She was this old Indian woman and she wore a wig and stuff, and it kept falling off her head, and she never noticed..."

"What? The wig?"

"No! Her turbine!!"

"Case closed. I think you can stop worrying about being put in the wrong stream."

"Why?...."

[Incidentally, Google searchers, turbine is pronounced with the same 'i' sound as in 'twine' or 'lime' or 'time'. You're welcome!]

Practising for school

Me practising for the 'first day of school' photo

The playground / playforest

We can all see through your tricks. You're forgetting we've been brought up on Derren Brown.

We went to an Open Day this morning at Orla's new school - the one she'll be attending in September. I had been worrying a little bit about how she would feel about going there, especially as Stevie has been asking me how I would feel if we stayed here longer. It's hard to make that decision at the moment because both kids have their ups and downs with it.

Every time we go on holiday Orla comes back complaining that she doesn't want to speak German anymore. And Hamish, well, he just likes a good moan anyway, and even though he says every day that he had a great day at Kita, he still likes to have a real good moan in the morning about having to go.

So, I have told Stevie that I couldn't make a decision about staying longer until Orla started school; because if she hated it, then I wouldn't want to stay longer. So it was nice to go again today and for both of them to love it. And it reminded me how much I love it and want to go back to school (there).

From the outside it doesn't look impressive at all, but it's just great the things they do with the kids, and the atmosphere and the people, and really, that's what it's all about, isn't it? Today there was lots for the kids to do: bead making, tomato planting, painting and drawing, music making, dancing, a clown that did tricks that all the smart kids spoiled. That bit I loved: "It's got a pocket in it! You've put the hankie in the pocket!!".

I even met someone who I want to force into being my friend. She's a teaching assistant whose husband works over here temporarily. They are due to return to the UK around the same time as us, so that was the first thing that I liked - something in common. But she also has a 4 year old daughter, and she looked an awful lot like a girl I was friends with in school who was really lovely, so I liked her even more for that. I spoke to her for ages, and afterwards when I told Stevie I liked her, he tried to encourage me to just go back over to her and ask her if she wanted to meet up sometime. But you know, I didn't want to look too keen. But next time I see her, I am going to pounce!