Alfie's pound for non-uniform day went through a 40 degree wash in the pocket of his school shorts, and came out spotless. I found it in the machine filter on Thursday night, which is the only reason he got to wear his dinosaur T-shirt on Friday 4 July. It was one of nine school asks since sports day, and the term isn't over yet.
None of it is big. That's the point. It's small amounts, one at a time, each with its own envelope or app or pound coin, and when I added them up on Sunday night I got a number I hadn't pencilled in anywhere.
Sports day and the fair
Sports day was Friday 27 June, on the school field, in the kind of sun that makes you wish you'd put cream on everybody twice. Isla came fourth in the egg and spoon after dropping the egg at three-quarters distance. She gave a short speech about the egg being the wrong shape. Alfie took the Reception sack race as an invitation to lie down, did a roll in the sack, and finished in the wrong lane to a huge cheer. Rob arrived at five to two in his work shorts, straight off the round, won the dads' race and has mentioned it eleven times.
The PTA ran an ice lolly stall, 75p each. Four of those, standing in a queue in the heat, is the easiest £3 I spent all month.
The summer fair was Saturday 5 July, warm and breezy enough to take the bunting down twice. I'd sent a tray of flapjack for the cake stall (£3.20 of oats, butter, sugar and syrup) and a bottle of pop for the bottle stall. The kids had £3 each to spend, which they went through by half past twelve on the welly wanging and a guess-the-sweets jar. Isla won bubble bath on the tombola and Alfie won a jar of pickled onions, which he carried round all afternoon like a trophy. Rob came straight from his Saturday round at two and was handed an apron and put on the barbecue until the sausages ran out.
Everything that has come home
- Non-uniform day, £1 each: £2.00
- Bottle for the bottle stall: £2.49
- Flapjack for the cake stall: £3.20
- At the fair (kids' £6, a raffle strip £2, two bacon baps £6, tea and a slice of cake £3.50): £17.50
- Teacher and teaching assistant collections, £3 a child, one per class: £6.00
- Ice lollies at sports day: £3.00
- End-of-year trips through ParentPay, paid, both next week (Alfie's farm park day £9.50, Isla's museum day £8.50): £18.00
- Last-day cake sale at 50p a go, still to come: £2.50
- Year 6 leavers' book, voluntary, still to come: £2.00
That comes to £56.69 by the last day of term, and £52.19 of it is already spent. It's nine separate asks if I count the two collections and the two trips as one each. There is no line for school money on the bills sheet and there never has been, so in July it comes out of whatever is left in the week. I'd call it a small drain rather than a hole.
I also don't resent any of it. The fair money stays in the school, and I'd rather a pound of mine went on the playground than on, say, another bag of crisps I don't need. But nobody tells you at the start of Reception how many envelopes there'll be, or that the one you need is always the one you left in last week's jeans.
What I'd change
I've started a jar by the front door with pound coins in it, since cash is what half of these want. That alone saves a Thursday-night panic at the cash machine. ParentPay trips go on the calendar the day the letter arrives, so the money's paid before the deadline and not on the morning of it.
From September I'm going to put £10 a month in an envelope marked "school bits" and see how long it lasts. It won't cover the autumn, with photos and non-uniform days and a harvest festival, but it'll tell me how far off I was. I suspect I was off by about £40.
Alfie, meanwhile, has decided that sports day was the best day of his school life and has asked if he can have another one tomorrow. I said it only happens once a year. He asked whether next year he can wear his cape.
