Our summer term only finished on Wednesday, so next year is still a way off (September) but I love these threads so I'll play anyway :-) DS6 will be starting P3, equivalent to second grade. Broadly looking forward to it. He had some hiccups last year that I posted about, but they improved, and by and large it was a good year. Certainly he learned a lot in all kinds of ways.

I don't know his teacher for next year at all, but DS liked her on the "taster day". My two biggest concerns are how he'll handle the increased-again writing demands, and how she'll handle his maths. The plan (discussed with his this-year teacher) is to make problem-solving be the main focus of his maths next year, with new content a minor element, but how well that works will be quite dependent on how comfortable his teacher is with the kind of problems he needs to work on. After next year, maths is taught by maths specialists, at which point things should get easier again.

He'll continue piano and start voice lessons. Currently he wants to play the 'cello as his second instrument, which I think is a great idea (not as painful as the violin, but still an orchestral instrument with plenty of slots per orchestra, so good for socialising, and a great repertoire), but he's still changing his mind fairly often so voice for at least one year seems wise: we won't have to buy him an instrument that he may go off after one year, it'll be good for him to think about intonation etc., and he'll have another year for his motor skills to develop before he has to deal with bowing and fingering.

Email: my username, followed by 2, at google's mail