Excitement, IT issues and a parade of plants at first ‘Zoom’ classroom

There was much excitement as her wonderful school – which was already sending regular newsletters and telephoning pupils – brought in the introduction of a classroom session by the online conferencing service Zoom for all of the classes this week, with hers one of the first to try it out.

Now when I say a classroom session, it was more of a catch-up session as the excitement of the class seeing each other for the first time in a month took over.

Of course first of all us parents had to overcome the issue of how to actually make your child seen and heard on Zoom – clearly I was not the only one who had never used it before!

But once the IT issues were sorted there was lots of chattering as her teacher gave them all a chance to excitedly talk over each other to say hello, before going round each of the children one by one to hear their news.

Needless to say there was lots of model making, bike riding and cookery news to share – as well as a bunch of birthdays and a new baby as one of her classmates became a big brother.

There was also a parade of bean plants on show as the class – given a bean to plant just before the Easter holidays – showed off just how high theirs had grown (ours is 32cms for the record!)

Of course my little girl had to take it one step further and instead of bringing her show-and-tell stuff to her tablet decided to give her class a bit of a tour of the house, as she took her tablet to the windowsill where our collection of newly planted seeds – and her bean plant – were growing (note to self, tidy up before the next Zoom meeting just in case she does it again!).

Her teacher also talked a little bit about the new topic they were told they were starting next at school – the Romans – and asked them what facts they knew.

My daughter, already prepared, then proceeded to take great delight in not only telling her class about a book she had found but decided to excitedly read from it for the rest of the class.

Not bad for a child who at the beginning of the session was being incredibly shy and barely audible over some of her louder class mates.

It was so wonderful to see almost the whole class ‘together’ again – if only for 40 minutes.

But there are plans in place to make it a more regular thing, much to the delight of all of the little ones, especially as it looks as though school life will not be returning to normal any time soon.

So for now my daughter will await an invitation to her next Zoom class, and I’ll make sure I hoover before my son has his first one!