Jump to content

Menu

horsellian

Members
  • Posts

    272
  • Joined

Everything posted by horsellian

  1. It may be just that someone did an age comparison rather than a level one. I think year 1 in England is the same age as kindergarten - 5-6 year olds? The level of reading for year 1 should be higher than K level, because English schools start with reception class for 4-5 year olds, and they teach reading in reception.
  2. Have you tried eBay? My mum has had great luck finding pieces to match their wedding present china (which was discontinued about a year after they bought it, 40yrs or so ago), and it hasn't been expensive. If you now the pattern name, then you might be able to find enough extra items to make a decent set.
  3. I HATE them so much, though I've only been to a few. They almost never go down well. Fortunately no-one's ever been stupid enough to throw me one, but if they did I would just turn around and leave. Same as I would do if anyone tried to sing "happy birthday" to me in a restaurant. I would just be outta there.
  4. The school may not have given you the option to choose (schools like to make lots of things seem compulsory when they are not) but you are under no obligation to be at home or open the door for a home visit if you don't want to. My DS is also starting reception this year, and we're not having one. They can't stop your child attending because you didn't have a home visit (unless it's a private school, when I guess they can do what they like).
  5. I don't know which ones the PP was talking about, but we've used the videos at www.uswim.com (the over 3s ones), which are great.
  6. This stuff isn't actually true though. The ages and free lunch is, but the state doesn't check your home (many, but not all, schools offer a home visit - which you can refuse without any penalty/black mark - to help the teacher see the child in their normal environment) and the named person rubbish is Scotland, not England, and doesn't fully exist yet. I seem to remember there's currently a legal challenge to it. (Also, Scotland's school system is very different to England's.)
  7. For nature/science keen kids in Oxford I'd recommend both the Museum of Natural History and the History of Science Museum (both are free) rather than the Ashmolean, which is history and art (it's great for artifacts if you've recently been learning ancient history though).
  8. Yup - I hate it so much I've learned to cut my own hair. I keep it long (well below shoulders) with a very light fringe, so it gets cut every 6 months or so, and I trim the fringe as needed.
  9. I find this closet thing interesting, as in the UK many houses don't have any closets. The closet-required definition turns my parents 7 bed with an office/study house into a 1 bed house (and that bedroom is the office/study, which has built in bookshelves on two walls, and a built in cupboard!)
  10. Norwegian are excellent - my DH uses them regularly for work, and would always choose them over Ryanair given a choice. He always travels hand luggage only though, so I don't know if they are expensive for hold bags.
  11. Also, many, many people don't have to do a tax return at all since income tax for employees is deducted accurately at source. You only have to do a tax return if you are self-employed or you have other sources of income you need to declare.
  12. My 6 year old loves to look up words in the dictionary, because she thinks it's very grown-up! She got herself a "schools" dictionary with Christmas money and is delighted with it. It does have shorter definitions than our 2-volume dictionary, and is much easier for her to use.
  13. Agreed, I think the UK/US extradition treaty is incredibly one sided, and it runs thus: US: Jump! UK: How high? I'm sure it would have been much easier to get Assange from the UK than from Sweden.
  14. My DHs grandmother and grandfather were estranged. They were still married until he died, but had not seen or spoken to each other for 40+ years.
  15. I was able to choose whether my maths and Stats degree was a BA or a BSc, I could have either with the classes I had taken. I chose BA since my first degree was in Chemistry.
  16. I only have one giant storage box for all my craft stuff, and it doesn't currently all fit! I'm trying to work down my stash by knitting some things for me/family, and lots of hats etc. for charity. And I knit a whole hat today :-)
  17. I got 6 seat pads that are not our style at all. The dining chairs needed new (clean) ones though, and at least I can't see them when I'm sitting on them.
  18. This is a complete straw man. I've rarely had to wait for more than 24 hours for a GP appointment if it is an infection or something fairly urgent. All surgeries save some on-day appointments for this kind of thing. Sometimes you can just turn up and be dealt with almost on the spot, if you know the problem: for example I've dropped into the GPs with a urine sample when I knew I had an infection and been out with a prescription in half an hour or so. Same when my pharmacist recommended DS should see a GP once - we went to book an appointment and they were able to see him same afternoon.
  19. Slightly OT here, but how do you get mozzarella into a stick shape anyway? Isn't it far too floppy? Or is American mozzarella rather different to European mozzarella?
  20. I don't usually think in miles, but more like time, as walking mountains takes longer for the same distance than walking riverbanks. A long walk is more than 4 hours (so I need to bring more than a snack), which would be about 10 miles on the flat, or somewhat less in the hills, maybe 8 miles?
  21. I haven't done it myself, but in the UK it's pretty common to get dental work done during pregnancy, because it is free! NHS dentistry has charges attached for working adults normally, but not when you are pregnant, because it's so important to avoid infections etc.
  22. We do about 3 or 4 loads a week - lights, darks, bedding, towels/cloths. Family of 4. But stuff only goes in the wash when it's grubby, not just worn once, particularly skirts, trousers and the kids clothes.
  23. We have an apple tree, and each year we store several shallow boxes of apples in the garage. We wrap the apples in newspaper individually so you can easily spot any that go bad. They last a few months that way.
×
×
  • Create New...