At Things One & Two's school they have, every Friday, what are known as Star assemblies for the infants and the juniors.  Throughout the week teachers award silver stars to their pupils for behaviour, effort, achievement etc.  Should a child have over 25 stars they receive a certificate, should they receive 30+ they get a certificate and something from the prize box such as bubbles or colouring pencils etc.  Thing Two is an old hand at this and rarely has a week gone by when she hasn't received a certificate, like I've said before she's so beautifully strange, well behaved and ridiculously clever, I sometimes wonder if she's really ours.

Last night I found her sat at her desk recreating, by hand, one of the certificates in impressive detail yet awarded to....her teacher.  This morning in class she handed it to her Teaching Assistant and asked her to place it in the middle of the pile.  Later that day, in the assembly, her teacher was reading out the names of the children awarded certificates and obviously came to a hand drawn certificate with her own name on it.  The other year two teacher stepped in, took over the handing out of certificates whilst Thing Twos teacher was made to stand in line with the other recipients of certificates to be applauded.  Needless to say both staff and pupils found this frightfully fun and entertaining.

All of this was Thing Two's own idea.   Every last bit of it.

However, it's worth noting she only awarded her teacher 25 stars so the poor teacher didn't get to dip in the prizebox.  Better luck next time....

My little scientist.

So, last night was the award ceremony at school.  Thing One was received an award in 2010 for achievement in Science, Thing Two received one in 2011 again for Science achievement and this year, Thing One got another, strangely for Science achievement again!  So The Mother kindly came round to look after Thing Two (seeing as it's a strictly ticket only and only two tickets per family) and.....The Toddler.  Yes, at the grand age of 27 months I left The Toddler for the first time ever...and the little bugger didn't even miss me! 

Previous years the prize was a book yet this year they had a table full of trophies.  From way at the back where we were sat it looks terribly impressive.  Thing One looks stupendously proud on stage when he went to receive his (bad parents that we are forgot to take a camera.  Shame on us. Consider our wrists slapped) yet this became overshadowed when after the event (a tedious 70 minutes of which only 10-15 was the actual giving of awards the rest was speeches, recitals blah blah blah) when we went to collect him, he was in absolute floods of tears.  Within 20 minutes of receiving it, the trophy had broken (as had many of the other childrens' judging by conversation around us) When we  examined it, I've seen better trophies out of the 2p coin dozer machines at Blackpool.  Nice idea but quality much? Poor kids were devastated!