School's out for summer…and so are the tissues!

It's that time of year when teachers are rejoicing and cracking open the bottle of bubbly, children are hyper and parents are tearing their hair out at the prospect of having to occupy their children for 6 weeks.

Admittedly there are days when I feel like I can't take much more arguing and fighting but I love the summer holidays, especially now that I'm working in a school! I still have my second job to do during the summer but it's for a maximum of four hours over 2 days and it'll give me & the children a little break from each other.

Today was a rather emotional day as Molly left junior school for high school and Harry leaves behind an amazing Teaching Assistant as he moves up to Year 1 (which he is not looking forward to at all.) Charlie is thoroughly looking forward to Year 4 and the move for him, I feel, will go really smoothly but Molly and Harry seem to be making a much bigger step up.

I also felt rather emotional seeing the other Year 6 children leave. I'm only there an hour a day but I've grown to love them over the last 10 months and I've really connected with a few of them.  Two weeks ago was their transition day and afterwards I went to join Molly for her tea party at her new school and I felt rather proud of seeing my junior school children all grown up and ready for the next step in their academic journey.

A small group of them came up to me at lunchtime today and said "Mrs B, you're the only one we're going to miss from this school". I'm not sure how entirely true that is, but it was rather sweet to hear nonetheless. One lad also said "You're like a second Mum to me" and as we all had a group hug I struggled to hold it together. I will really miss them.

I didn't pick Molly up at the end of the day as her & Charlie went straight to a party but I think that was for the best as I'm sure I would have sobbed in the playground and embarrassed her! I asked her if she cried during the Leavers' Assembly or at the end of the day and she said "I half cried". I haven't yet worked out what she meant by that!

Harry's TA came over to me when I went to collect him and she told me that my thank you card had made her cry, which set me off again and her too.

Please tell me that I'm not the only one who permanently had a tissue at the ready today!!