Conferences

The kids are out of school today and tomorrow for conferences. That makes a 4 day weekend for those of you who are counting. 4 days off. Sounds pretty nice. Until Sunday. Then I will be ready for school to start  again. Today though, the sun was shining we had both conferences this morning so we decided to make it a family day.

First up was Miss E's conference, which she attended and showed us a few things they were working on. She's still pretty soft spoken in the classroom but she's getting better about it and things are overall going great. My main concerns with her are I don't want her to get bored AND I don't want her to get too comfortable thinking she's the smartest kid in the class. We got her TAG program today which, given the school's funding limitations, I'm pretty happy with. She's going to stay in her reading group, which is OK by us. It's a little slow for her but they are really learning the building blocks of language and of comprehension, which is important. She is going to be doing a weekly pull out with the other 4 kids in 1st/2nd grade who are in TAG where they will work on critical thinking skills, and she is going to be able to do a research project with her teacher later this year. It's pretty great overall, lots of opportunities for her to challenge herself and to keep busy. Her teacher also told me that since Miss E doesn't raise her hand in class very much (something we have been working on) that's she's started just calling on her sometimes. My hope for Miss E this year is that she will find her voice in the classroom and continue to love school and learn new things.

Then we headed to Mr. T's conference which was equally great. I'm the room parent for his class so I know his teacher pretty well and she and I have chatted a lot. I knew there wouldn't be any big surprises, Mr. T is at grade level just where he's supposed to be. His reading/writing just crossed the base-line where they want them to be starting 1st grade and he's, of course, social and talkative in class. More importantly, he has just started WANTING to write and WANTING to read things. I have struggled with him because I don't want to push him into anything that he's not into but at a certain point you HAVE to read and write. He's just always happier building things or making up stories that he tells us or talks himself through. As his teacher has put it "he's very verbal (understatement of the year there) and we are hoping to translate that onto paper soon". And it's happening!

Such different and wonderful in their own ways kiddos! I am just so happy.

Afterward we went out to lunch and headed to a local park to enjoy some rare Oregon sunshine. It was such a nice family day.