jan 2010 academics

Welcome to my 250th post!!!!
Jan 2010 Academics: One day over winter break it was time for story time before bed and Alex picked “Green Eggs and Ham”. Casey said “are you going to read it to me?” and Alex did! He got through most of it with very little help and Casey was super enthusiastic about Alex’s success. Alex has read it 3 more times since and we tell everyone we run into. Chloe’s been reading aloud since shortly after school started and just before the break her teacher told me that she was going to move Chloe into the highest level reading group in the class. Chloe was very proud of herself and she is one of only 3 members in the group. Shortly after joining the group the teacher assigned a book report. Mrs. Cornwall picked out a non-fiction about birds and suggested that Chloe write one sentence about what a bird is, one sentence about a specific type of birds, and one sentence about what birds eat. The bird book tied in nicely with the Kindergartener’s participation in a class project for the Science Fair. The teacher made different color bird feeders out of wax covered paper juice cartons and asked each child to record the number of birds that eat from each color feeder. Unfortunately our cat Disney is a bird killer and the birds won’t venture into our yard any more.

Every day the kids race to the bus stop, scarfing down breakfast, throwing on coats, gloves, and hats and literally running for the bus stop in hopes that they will get to be First In Line. There are only 4 kids at their bus stop and at the beginning of the year they would chase each other around and giggle while waiting for the bus. Now they are so hung up on who gets to get on the bus first that they race for the stop and then stand in line guarding their position. How strange our competitive nature is.

One Thursday Chloe told me that Friday is “jersey day” and students are allowed to wear team colors. She also said “Mom, I’m afraid that if I don’t wear a jersey the other kids won’t think I’m cool”. I couldn’t believe that she’d come up with something like that while still in Kindergarten. I wasn’t about to pay retail price for a jersey of a team she cares nothing about so I found the Raven’s logo online (her team of choice, Daddy likes the Eagles) and drew a copy of it on a white turtle neck and colored it in with fabric paint. It isn’t bad, but it is definitely not a professional job. Fortunately though, no one has told her that a shirt drawn on by your mom is far less cool than no jersey at all.