Teacher's Pet

My heart always sinks when any one of the children come out of school excitedly holding aloft their class stuffed toy. The class animal comes with a journal bursting with photos and anecdotes of the wonderful weekends he has spent with other families and the pressure is on to show him a good time.

So far, we have had a couple of teddies, a crocodile wearing some child’s old PE t-shirt, Maple Monkey and Reggie the Ring-tailed Lemur.

Some toys came with pyjamas and a toothbrush. Some were nicer than others. A couple had been through the washing machine a few too many times. Maple Monkey even sent a postcard afterwards to the homes of all the children of Maple class, thanking them for his stay. (There was a dedicated teacher!)

I quite quickly learned not to get sucked in to the competitive parent thing. The toy’s journal makes interesting reading, seeing the range in ability in the children’s accounts of his stay, and the photos and how other people spend their weekends. You really don’t want to get landed with the class toy for the half term holiday.

When we were at school in the 80s, we all had turns taking the real live class hamster home in the holidays. Although, admittedly that ended badly, as unfortunately, the class hamster never recovered from going down a flight of stairs in his hamster ball, during his stay with us. That was an awkward conversation for our parents to have on the Monday morning. On reflection perhaps the stuffed toy is a better idea.

When Teddy Oak, the enormous bear mascot of the Reception class, first came home it seemed to be up to the parent to describe the weekend events, since the child could not yet write.

As a first experience of this for both Ben and I, I looked back through the bear’s diary for a clue as to what to do. The bar was set pretty high. On the page before, privileged Teddy Oak had been taken to Lapland with the last member of his class to have had him. There were impressive photos and taking up a whole side of A4 was proudly displayed Teddy Oak’s very own Husky Driving Licence.

Follow that!