Thursday & Friday (11/6 & 11/7)

Yesterday (Thursday) Terra came home with a math workbook to use at home to practice her math. We're having to limit how many pages she does each night. I feel badly, I shouldn't be limiting her. I feel like she should be able to learn at HER pace, in step with her level of motivation, curiosity, and energy. And yet I know that Public School doesn't work that way, and fear letting her get too far ahead of the rest of the class's level. I am encouraging her to be mediocre? I don't want her to be average if she can (and she can, it's obvious) be so much more than average. Even the high end of average sucks, if she could has the ability to excel beyond that. I'm not sure what to do, how to handle this.  I do NOT want to hold her back in any way.

And yet, I can't let her get too far ahead because she'll then be bored and unchallenged, which I know from experience leads to trouble. I know I am not equipped to home school her, tried that last year. She craves the social interaction she gets at school, she loves the group activities, and having other kids to work with is such a huge plus...

You'd think I'd know by now that parenting is complicated, but I'm at a total loss here.

Wednesday Nov 4

Today we got to RSVP to her first official classmate birthday party. Fun! It's for a boy in her class who loves Transformers. Can't really afford to buy someone elses kid a gift, but we will anyway. We haven't lived up to our end of the "5 green smilies = a Saturday special outing" deal lately. I'll just find a good deal on something Transformers...

She of course got a green smiley today, or we wouldn't even have considered RSVPing that we'd be there lol.

Apparently they tested the class on their sight words today, Terra knew 28 of 32 on sight. The ones she didn't know surprised me. She already knows this week's words, but not my, do, the, and like.  She needs to be practicing her sight words daily, but with me working six nights a week, it isn't really happening. That makes me sad - I don't (really really don't) want my job to have a negative influence on her school performance!

Monday and Tuesday

Monday and Tuesday - the first of each in November. A new week means new sight words, and a new poem:

November

In November's gusty gale
I will flop my flippy tale
and spout hot soup - I'll be a whale.
Spouting once
spouting twice
spouting chicken soup with rice.

Awesome, more chicken soup... maybe it'll help with all the sickies! 

Her new sight words are: fun, play, & my.

As of now, 1:34am Wednesday morning, we haven't even made new flash cards for them. I've GOT to get my stuff together with this whole working thing. I feel so out of touch all of a sudden!

Another thing that arrived in her spiffy pink backpack today - confirmation that I have been approved to volunteer at the school! Woo Hoo! Now, the trick will be to figure out how I'm going to manage to actually volunteer when I already can't manage this working thing!

Terra also got to attend her previously rained out field trip to Riverbend Farms. That's the local pumpkin patch, petting zoo, etc. The teachers took nearly 100 pics! I'm only sharing a couple though because most of them are group shots and I try not to take the liberty of posting pictures of other people's children on the internet. However, from the ones I'm posting, you'll see that they magically taught her to feed the animals, plow, and DRIVE! Man, and I can't get her to clean her own room!

Absence # 3

Absent again. They say going to public school strengthens a child's immune system because they're exposed to multitudes of illnesses that their little bodies build up an immunity to. I'm looking forward to the "strengthening" part. So far, all we've had is the 'sick' part.

Absence #2

I swear Terra hasn't been totally well since she started school - she's had this cough she just can't quite get rid of. She hasn't run a fever since the night before her first absence, but she hasn't been well either. The last couple of days she's had a head cold. Last night it moved into her eyes, which are now swollen and gunky - and the cough is back, again. We kept her home today. She was less than thrilled to hear that she wasn't going to school this morning. Now she's having fun using Daddy's computer to play silly games, and I'm off to work. Hope she feels better tomorrow!

Pumpkin Activities

Here are some photos from their pumpkin activities the other day. They estimatedthe weights of4 different pumpkins of various sizes, predicted whether they would sink or float, and then got to all take turns ripping the guts out of the largest of the pumpkins. I really wish I could share more pics, but I won't share pics with other people's children in them...

is it just me or does she look a lil Punkin Drunk in this pic?

Forgive/overlook the terribly chapped upper lip that she won't stop licking!

In this pic she's recording her findings and making a little book out of the things she learned. So cute to see pictures of her writing like this, seems so grown up.

Had to blur a kid or two out of this pic :)

Field Trip to the Pumpkin Patch! (Not)

Well Terra's class was supposed to go to the pumpkin patch today, but it rained them out. Now it's been postponed till next week - AFTER Halloween. On one hand I'm (a little selfishly) upset - I mean what's the point in picking out a pumpkin after Halloween? But on the other hand, she's still so excited about going, and I know she'll enjoy it, even if it's not till December. It *is* her first field trip after all! And of course we can use her pumpkin to decorate for Thanksgiving, or better yet, make a pie out of it for Thanksgiving!

We have new sight words this week: can, is, & it. Let me say again, I am continually amazed by how fast she is picking up all of her words, and how hard she works at implementing them into activities like writing stories.

Another green smiley today. Again, for a child who doesn't always listen very well at home, and who chatters incessantly, the fact that she behaves so well in class is a very happy surprise/relief. It makes me proud, because it demonstrates that she understands the differences in what behavior is acceptable in different places. It also proves to me that she's sometimes difficult at home simply because *I let her get away with it!*

Thursday and Friday - it's a two-fer, 2 days late!

Boy is life with 2 jobs ad three kids busy! I'm thinking maybe weekly blogging will be more manageable, because daily blogging isn't working out so well.

Both days were green smiley days. On Wednesday Terra forgot to take her library book to school for library day, so on Thursday she got to go get a new book - a Junie B Jones chapter book, which she insists we read one chapter of each day. She's just so dedicated to school work and learning, so thirsty for knowledge, so proud of herself for every thing she learns and can share with us. It's just incredible. I hope this is her attitude towards school for the next 13 years. If it is, she'll have no trouble with her future!

On Thursday afternoon, along with her new book, she brought home a note from her teacher requesting that she bring a towel or blanket and her favorite stuffed animal. The class has been collecting gum balls for their class gumball machine - when the machine was full, the class would get a special prize. They filled it up this week and they got to have a picnic with a special snack. Terra was so excited!

Friday morning she took her stuffed poodle and her favorite blanket to school. It was overcast and there was a 60% chance of rain. Scott and I obsessed a bit about the possibility that it would rain out their picnic. She lucked out - it cleared up and the sun came out and they ate cookies in the school yard with their stuffed animals. She came home and yelled at me for not packing a snack. A.) I actually DID pack her a snack, but accidentally put it in her lunch box. B.) She didn't need a snack, the teachers provided the "special" snack they all had. But she was soooo upset with me for not packing her a snack!

I'm feeling a little out of whack - working every week night has me struggling to get time in every evening to practice her poems and sight words with her. I do not want my situation to effect her school performance, and I'm really concerned that it will over time...

Another Wednesday

Well, today Terra came home not feeling well. She's been coughing, congested, having a tough time breathing through her nose. Thankfully she has no fever, but I won't be surprised if she doesn't go to school tomorrow (Thursday). She's vaguely anti-meds (we almost have to sit on her to get to hold still long enough to take any kind of medicine) - she seems to prefer suffering. Wonder where she get's that from!?

I washed and returned her spare outfit this morning. It was still in her book bag when she got home? I guess that big bag full of clothing in her tiny little book bag was easy to miss. She also forgot her library book, and wouldn't you know it, it was Media Center day. *sigh* She came home angry that she didn't get to bring home a new book, said it was our fault. I made sure to straighten her out and remind her that her library book is actually her responsibility!

Ah well, some days are better than others, right? I can't complain, she still got a green smiley, brought home a ton of pictures and worksheets she'd done, was in a great mood despite being sick...

Hmmm... that's odd

Terra came home in her "back up" outfit today. She wet her pants!? Ms. M said it happened during their math lesson, and they think she was afraid to interrupt to ask to go to the little girl's room. They reassured her that it was ok to go potty ANY time, so here's to hoping that doesn't happen again, I know she was embarrassed to have a potty accident in front of all of her friends.

Other than that, she had a good day complete with her green smiley -- and another announcement about school night at a local restaurant. *sigh* I wish I could afford to go to every one of these fund raising nights, but seriously, we can't afford to go to any of them. Maybe that will change soon, now that I've gone back to work. Working has definitely added a new element to the afternoon adventure. Of course, I feel like a crappy parent on days when I work, because I'm not available so much to do homework, make dinner or give baths... My rational side knows her dad is here, and is perfectly capable, but I can't help it! I feel like she's changing and maturing and growing so quickly that every minute I'm at work is time I'm missing out on with her.

I admit it, I have a different and deeper sense of appreciation of her than I did when the other kids were in Kindergarten. It makes me glad that I appreciate her, and yet, on the other hand, it makes me sad that I was so busy, working so much, and was so young and unappreciative with the other children.

Mom and Terra go to the jungle...

Part of our afternoon routine is to work with Terra with her sight words. She gets new words each Monday, today we added 'at, am, & see' and so we were working on them this afternoon. As we were were working our way through the stack of flash cards, she'd come up with a sentence with each word - unprompted.

This is a new thing, which progressed into wanting to make sentences with the actual cards. That's an adventure because the list of sight words is still pretty short, especially the nouns. So we made up a few new cards and commenced to sentence building. She actually ended up writing her own little story, which is pretty cool: I see Mom and Terra at the jungle. We see a gorilla. We love it. Three sentences is all they ask of them in Kindergarten, and not until later in the year :) My lil smarty pants!

She also got her new poem:

Five Little Apples
Five little apples lying on the floor.
I'll roll one away, and that leaves four.
Four little apples hanging on a tree,
I'll pick one off, and that leaves three.
Three little apples, I know what to do!
I'll put one in my pocket and that leaves two.
Two little apples sitting in the sun.
I'll pick one up, and that leaves one.
One little apple waiting in my lunch.
I'll eat it up with a
CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH!

This one is pretty intricate, and she is going to need a couple of days to work on it, but she's getting it. 

We didn't have anything to make her lunch out of this morning, so she left mad, then we realized we forgot to even send her a snack! This morning was not one of our finest shining moments lol. She survived, ate lunch at school, and was subjected to the horrors of having to eat Goldfish for snack (egads!) but we made sure to go grocery shopping and stockpile lunch supplies and snacks. Here's to hoping that Tuesday is a better day, complete with a turkey sandwich and her applesauce. (Have I mentioned she's a little finicky about what she eats?)

She got her customary green smiley, but didn't tell me a lot of details about her day - not a lot of time to though, because I had to leave (suddenly and unexpectedly) for work at 5. We're going to have to get this schedule thing worked out!

Parent Teacher Conference (in lieu of 1st report card)

Bright and early this morning, we went to the school to talk with Terra's teacher about her progress so far. We don't actually get a report card the first grading period - this conference IS her report card. I was pretty excited going in, I wanted to hear if she was doing as well as she seemed to be, based on a long line of green smilies and 'good job' stickers.


Well, Ms. M. could have gushed a little more without hurting my feelings, but that's ok LOL. She's on level, or ahead, in pretty much every subject area. Ms. M and Mrs. L both assured me that she's slid effortlessly into the social scene, and is academically right where she should be. I got to look at her evaluation testing, and on most things, she was ahead of average, but not so much as to cause issues for her.

The most surprising news we heard while we were there: Terra does NOT talk incessantly while in class. Amazing. The coolest thing I heard today: "We can tell you work with her at home, and Terra is very proud of the fact that she has a word wall at home!"

Good stuff, I'm proud of her. She's a good student, she's attentive, curious, respectful, gets along well with other students and teachers, listens well to her lessons, and to the rules. She's learning quickly and the teachers pointed out no subject area that she's struggling in - so we'll keep doing what we're doing, cuz it's working!

2-for-1

Thursday and Friday were green smiley days, with little else to report.

Thursday was School Night at Kate's Skating Rink... the school gets a percentage of sales, so they obviously encourage parents to take their children. They do so by convincing the whole class that they, and all their awesome little friends, will get to go to [enter business name here] together and play and have a wonderful time.

Frankly, it pisses me off. I understand it's much needed income for the school, but it's unfair to spend so much time getting my child's (and everyone else's) hopes up about going skating, eating ice cream, or pizza, or going ice skating, or whatever other activity it is that week.We're barely scraping by, we're barely keeping the power on and keeping the rent paid, we can't afford to do some weekly thing that costs us a fortune - we have a family of 5, do the math ok?

BUT I AM SICK TO DEATH OF BREAKING HER HEART ONCE A WEEK BECAUSE I HAVE TO SAY NO!!!!!

Henry, Mudge, and Homework

The teacher wants Terra to do one activity from her homework every night. Terra wants to do 3 or 4. I let her. She particularly loves the "Letter Detective" where she's given a letter, and she goes around the house and finds things that start with that letter. The way it's set up, she doesn't have to "turn in" anything to prove that she's done it, but I let her make an actual list, because she gets to practice her letters, and it gives me the opportunity to explain the intricacies of letter combinations, silent e's and such.

She's already done 7 of the activities in the last 2 nights since she got the worksheet. I do believe we'll still be having some "wing it" nights because we're going to run out of things to do.

She came home with a new book from the media center today, Henry and Mudge: The First Book. We've read it 4 times tonight. Cute cute book, which she loves. Word to the wise: if your child has been begging for a dog, do not read Henry and Mudge. It will only be used as ammunition against you in their quest for a pet. Luckily, we already have 3 dogs!

They no longer have nap/rest period in class, so she's coming home exhausted, and in need of a nap. We have yet to work out a really good afternoon schedule. To nap or not to nap... both come with pros and cons. With a nap, she sleeps till she's ready to get up because there's no getting her up till she's ready. Then the whole afternoon is shot, no time for homework, playing, dinner, bath etc... and then she's up till 10:30 or 11 at night, which makes the next day terrible. If she doesn't take a nap, she's happy to do homework, but she's also demanding, over-tired/over-stimulated, grumpy, gets in trouble and then passes out at 7 or 8, often in a random place, fully dressed, sans a bath.We'll adjust and get it all worked out I'm sure, but for now, I'm a little stumped.

Alright, back to today's class.
She got a green smiley, and 2 prizes out of the prize box. One of them was a very nifty little journal. A Strawberry Shortcake journal. Man was she psyched about that one. The other was a sticker, which she stuck in the front of the journal. And that's pretty much all she told me about class. It's odd, she has this perfect memory for class poems and sight words, but when she gets home and I ask her what she did that day, about 50% of the time, she says she can't remember! Haha, I think she just doesn't want to bother with telling me everything. Most days, she fills me in over the afternoon/evening, bit by bit. Today though, we had a busy crazy night and she didn't really have a chance to tell me anything.

But, tomorrow is another day, right? :-)

what's with the chicken soup poems?

Terra got this in the mail today.

Dear Terra,

We always love seeing your smiling face every morning. You are doing a great job learning our classroom rules and routines! Keep up the great work!

♥ Miss M & Mrs. L

Needless to say, in accordance with the above notation re: rules and routines, she got another green smiley. Still no word on volunteering, except that I'm not one of the three room moms, which is probably for the best. They're responsible for coordinating holiday parties, which I suck at. We also still don't know when her parent teacher conference is. 

We did find out for sure what her new poem is: 

October

In October I'll be host
To witches, goblins,
and a ghost.
I'll serve them chicken
soup on toast.

Whoopy once
whoopy twice
whoopy chicken soup with rice.

We got her official copy of the homework for the month of October. Fun :) No, that isn't sarcasm, she loves studying and doing "school" when she gets home in the evenings, and it's nice to actually have a print out of good suggestions to go by rather than her just winging it and making things up.

And can I just say... my absolute favorite part of the day is watching my big girl hop off the bus every afternoon, and run across the yard with a great big smile. I'm so proud of her!

Hmmm

Terra's teacher was "missing" again today, and for some reason Terra thinks she's in Boston, seeing some football game? I'm not a sports fan, no idea if there even is/was a game in Boston, but there's got to be some reason Terra thinks that. Regardless, I'm a little concerned, school has been in session for a month, and her teacher has been out at least 3 times. I can't help but believe that it's effecting the class' educational experience, since a substitute teacher doesn't know/follow the regular schedule. At this age, I think having a structured environment is beneficial. If my 6yo is coming home and telling me that, "we didn't do centers" or "we didn't do calendar/story/math/whatever time," then obviously, she's bothered by it, and I'm sure she isn't the only one. I'm all for staying home if you're sick, or going to doctor's appointments. But missing school/work for a ball game?

(a bit of looking, and it seems the Pats played the Ravens at Gillette Stadium, so I suppose Terra may be exactly right...)

Anyway.

Terra got new words: Do, Like, & You. We made some new flash cards and went through all her sight/dolch words, days of the week, practiced writing letters, and numbers, and worked on some addition and subtraction. The crazy part? It was ALL HER IDEA. She did practice work, homework, and asked me to "be her tutor" and worked almost from the time she came home until she went to bed. I am so proud of her. My insatiable little sponge. And yet, I have to admit, I was a little relieved when she fell asleep. We literally did school work for nearly 5 hours after she came home today!

Her new poem kicked in today. But I'm not sure what it is. We looked at the website- it hasn't been updated. We received a print out with all 4 of the October poems, but there's no indication of which is which, and when I went by what seemed to be the next one, Terra said they'd done a different one in class. I'm more than happy to work with her on stuff at home, but it's a little difficult when I can't be sure of what they're doing because things aren't updated (because the teacher is too busy with NFL to worry about keeping the students and parents  informed and on schedule).

I also haven't heard back from either of her teachers about when our parent teacher conference will be - I assume that's because her teacher isn't available. I also assume that it isn't tomorrow, which was one of the 3 dates I chose as options. I better not get a call tomorrow that she wants me there at a moment's notice.

Truthfully, I'm not sure what they *did* do in class today. But by gosh, we did a full days worth of work at home - all subjects even! It was another green smiley day, she got off the bus "reading" 'The Topsey-Turvies' which isn't my favorite book, but does seem to be hers, which is more important. It keeps her engaged and interested, so that's what counts.

I also found some new web links that are educational that Terra loved, I'll add them to the link list in the right sidebar. They're mostly pre-K level, like Sesame Street, but they were great for reinforcing number and letter recognition, counting, mentally connecting the capital and lower case letters, etc...

Another week done

Another week done - and done an hour early. I had to pick her up early today because of another Teacher Conference with Bren's teachers today. Ooh it makes her grumpy when she has to leave early. Especially on Fridays. Fridays are treat box day - if you have an all-green week (which she did) you get a treat, and she had to leave before getting hers today. And, I had the audacity to interrupt her book-buddy time. This child LOVES books, loves being read to, and loves reading them to me (of course, she isn't really reading so much as telling the story by memory) and I love that she loves books. I hope she turns into an avid reader like Tommy and Brendon. Reading is so much the foundation for all other subjects, and children who love to read are more likely to do well in school.

Anyway, trust me when I tell you we regretted having to pick her up early, we paid for it: she talked & griped the entire time we were trying to have a conversation with 2 of Bren's teachers and his guidance counselors. I was wishing I had duct tape :)

They had a soccer camp today at her school and Terra hit the car this afternoon begging to be signed up for soccer. Now she wants to join ballet, the girl scouts, horseback riding lessons, soccer, cheerleading, and karate... Have I mentioned I don't really have a job? Anyone wanna "adopt a student" who wants to be in everything?

So, yep, 5 green smilies this week, poem and words memorized, all in all another great week. I have to send in my paperwork for the required Kindy parent teacher conference so we can get her report card in a week. I'm pretty excited to hear what her teacher has to say about her and her work.

I also talked to the office about the volunteer paperwork. They only just turned in all the paperwork, and it will likely be a couple more weeks before we know anything about what I get approved to do. It's probably best that it has taken a while. I'd have been one of those pain in the ass control-freak helicopter moms who would have driven the teachers nuts and probably inhibited Terra's progress. Yep, I'm that Mom, LOL!

October 1st - a recap of September

I just can't believe it's October already!

Another green smiley today. In September she got 19 greens and 1 yellow. Not too bad!

I love that her teacher is so tech savvy and doing so much in the way of electronic updates. They regularly take and upload pictures and videos of class time, which is a pretty new experience for me. 4 of my kids are either through school or in Middle/High school, and I've never had such an interactive, nearly real time, update system. I wish every teacher used their Moodle pages so effectively!

(if they did, I'd likely be having fewer problems with Brendon right now...)

Anyway, the poem this week was ingrained in her brain 2 weeks before it was supposed to be, her new sight words are committed to memory quite nicely. She has mastered the art of counting to 25 (actually 29, but who's counting? lol) She can also go across the monkey bars, hang upside down, slide down the fireman's pole, skip (which she seriously couldn't do before she started school), say the days of the week, recognize her color words, plus about 10 other words on sight, and she can, and does, spend a lot of time writing/sounding out words with her dry erase board, and mounds of paper. I'm pretty impressed with how well she usually does with sounding out words and writing them. Not perfect, but good.

She still has issues with W/M and d/b, and often confuses them. She also still has trouble with the W and Y and H sounds. But all in all, after 20 days in Kindergarten, I'm pretty happy with her academic progress as well as her social skills, and motor skills too.

Monday Monday

New words!
Mom, Dad, & love. No idea why we had 3 words one week, 10 next (which we studied for 2 weeks) then 3 this week... But it's cool, so far, she knows them all :)
New oem!
Well, actually, this weeks poem is the one that they originally had last week, before they switched 'em up. She knows it by heart from last week already lol.

Green Smiley today, and the joy of knowing that one of her classmates just returned from an extended absence due to the Swine Flu. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not overly concerned about H1N1 vs the regular seasonal flu (which we never get innoculated for), and I'm not all in a tizzy and planning on boiling my kid. What I am worried about is that the schools and people in general ARE flipping out thanks to the media hype, and lord only knows what new measures they'll put in place now that there's a confirmedcase.I will not be surprised to find out our childen will have to be sent to school in full bio hazard suits - or, I dunno, ziploc baggies.

Best I can tell, her biggest accomplishment (as far as she's concerned anyway) is that today, she overcame her fear of the monkey bars - and even hung upside down on them, all by herself! 

So, this afternoon she came home, played a bit, got ticked off, threw a fit, and got sent to her room, where she fell asleep, and slept till 8pm. She woke up coughing again, coughing till she gags and pukes. It comes and goes, no other symptoms, no fever... we'll see if she'll be going to school in the morning. Between the coughing/gagging, and the fact that she's going to be up till freakin 3 in the morning...

I still haven't heard anything about the volunteering. Guess I'll call in the morning. Or should I just be patient? I dunno, I've never volunteered in the school before...

Week in Review

I can't believe I didn't blog for the whole week! Sorry, I've been busy, totally stressed, and sick :|

This week her sight words were, again, the color words. She's pretty well mastered them all.

Her poem changed from one apple poem to a different apple poem, which messed her up because she kept intertwining the 2 poems. Her teacher had posted the one poem on the Moodle page, and she had it memorized totally over the weekend, then Monday rolled around and the teacher had changed the poem. Kind of sneaky, and Terra never quite learned the new one 100%.

ORIGINAL POEM:
Apple Tree

Way up high in an apple tree
two red apples winked at me.
So I shook that tree as hard as I could
And down came the apples
Mmm- they were good!

NEW POEM:
Apples
Apples, apples what a treat
Sweet and tart and good to eat
Apples green and apples red
hang from branches overhead
and when they ripen,
down they drop
so we can taste our apple crop!

The even more confusing news is that, barring any more changes, next week's poem is also about apples. We're looking forward to more confusion lol.

This week was an all-green-smilies week, of which we are very proud. I'm not sure what her reward will be this week - Daddy has to work (thank you Universe for the opportunity to work, after 9 months of being unemployed!) so whatever it will have to be on Sunday.

There are new pictures up on the Shutterfly site too. Here are a couple of her, with any other children cropped out.

She brought home her first book from the Media Center: "How About a Hug" which doesn't seem to hold her attention, or be all that helpful in learning any of the things they're working on. We went to the local library too, and checked out some more books, books that incorporate her color words, the days of the week, the seasons, etc...

She has not yet learned to write her full name quite well enough to fi it on the line to get her own library card though.

Friday 9/18

Green smiley again today. That's 4 for the week. Normally the rule is that if she gets a green every day for the week, she is rewarded with a Saturday outing. She got one yellow this week, so she *shouldn't* be getting any outing this week. Unfortunately (for the strict parent in me) the Cabarrus County Fair is in town, and someone has offered to pay 1/2 the cost of getting in for the whole family. That means, of course, that she's getting an unearned outing. But ya know, our county doesn't have a fair any more, it's a once a year opportunity, and it isn't really fair to to the other kids to be disallowed based on Terra's classroom behavior. *sigh* Sometimes, I think life with one child must be so much less complicated!

She knows nearly all of her color words on sight, but still confuses blue and brown. I figure 8 out of 10 isn't too bad, considering she only had to memorize 3 words last week!

Our First Yellow Smiley

Well I guess I jinxed her with my post yesterday. Today she got her first yellow smiley - big surprise, she got it for talking when she was supposed to be NOT talking. I'm a little surprised that hasn't been an issue before, she does love to talk.

So she got off the bus and came across the yard, and she whispered in my ear, "Mommy, please don'tbe mad, I accidentally got a yellow smiley..." and started crying. Poor kid, she was more upset than I was about it. I mean, don't get me wrong, disobeying the teacher (who had warned her several times) is unacceptable - but she was so sorry, I feel like it made a deep enough impression on her that she didn't need me to yell at her. We talked about it, and she knows it wasn't ok. If it becomes a habit, I'll be harsher, but today, I was just glad to see that she took it seriously and understood that yellow smilies are not ok. And, a little bit of me is glad that her first yellow wasn't for shoving someone down on the playground, ya know?

So she's really getting the color words down pretty well, but I think we'll have to keep working on them for a while. She has trouble with black and gray especially. She did decide we were ALL playing school this evening though and sang the days of the week, and the cutest darn weather song ever! And boy was she a strict teacher! She made me sit criss cross apple sauce on the carpet for a long time, and when I straightened out my legs, she threatened me with a BLUE smiley, which is as bad as it gets. Whew, she's tough!

We're working pretty heavily on getting her to write her last name, and to control the size of her printing, in hopes that she will soon be able to write her name well enough on the application at the library, and get her very own library card. We'll see how long that takes, she really has a hard time controling the size of her letters so, we'll see.

Happy Humpday

Today Terra's teacher updated their Shutterfly page with pics of the kids doing a writing activity last week - shaving cream! What fun! The day they did it in school, we also did it at home. We did ours in the back yard though, no idea how the teachers got the shaving cream up off of 21 kids and 21 desks... INSIDE. Braver women then me!

Mommy has a Migraine

This morning at 5am, Terra's big brother Tyler, her daddy's oldest son, arrived from NY. He'll be living with us, and I can't tell you how excited we all are! He arrived before Terra left for school, but she's like me, not all that coherent in the early morning hours, so when she got off the bus, she asked Scott, "Was I daydreaming about Tyler being here?"

Of course, Scott couldn't pass up the opportunity to tease her and said yes. She was heart broken! Thank goodness he told her the truth quickly, or she'd have gone into full meltdown mode, and that doesn't happen often with Terra.

Happy Monday!

New poem - mostly memorized. New word list: her color words! Three words last week, 10 this week! Awesome! I've decided she, like me, is going to have a fairly easy time with language and reading. I want to work more on math, it seems that Ms Mullins isn't doing quite as much math as reading/writing.

Of course, I forget that they consider learning the days of the week, and the months of the year as math work.

Before Week 3

What a weekend! We did go to the school playground like Terra asked, as her reward from another all-green-smiley week last week. While we were there, she overcame her fear of going down the Fireman's Pole. Today (Sunday) she spent the better part of the day playing with the children who were attending our next door neighbor's 10th birthday party. She's always been VERY social, and has always played well with others, been kind hearted and easy to get along with, etc... but her interactions with other kids seem so much more mature since she started school. It's adorable. Seriously, watching her try to teach another little boy (one who was obviously older than she is) to ride her (too small for him) bright pink two-wheeler was too cute. She is so much more... fearless, less shy, more outgoing...

My baby, after just 7 full days in school, has grown up so much.

So this evening after the party we had dinner and a good scrubbing bubble bath, and worked a little to let her get familiar with the new poem "Crayons."

Friday #2

Well, it was another week full of green smilies, so we agreed to take her somewhere as a reward. I'll be danged if she didn't choose school. She asked if we could go to the school playground (not her own school though, another very close by) to play on the playground. We will oblige her, tomorrow. I'm glad to hear that she loves school so much that she wants to go even on the weekends!

I'm also looking forward to working on her new poem and things as the Moodle page is updated with her new lessons this weekend. We'll definitely work a bit on her new poem before Monday morning!

I hope I'll hear back this week about my status as a school volunteer. They do a full bacckground check, criminal and financial, check with personal references and professional references -- it's a careful investigation, and I have no idea how long it will take, or if they'll have room available for me to volunteer if I'm approved. It's a tiny school, and the parents are very involved, so they may actually NOT have a place for me to volunteer. I'll be sad if that's how it works out, but I suppose there are worse problems to have in a school

I did send in some items from the class wish list as well as extra snacks for kids who forget to bring one. I also sent the teacher a link to the interactive dolche site since it wasn't listed on her Moodle site.

Homework, sort of

The Moodle Page has several links with games and activities that we can work on at home to reinforce the class room lessons. Terra is pretty much already up to the point where she is supposed to be at the end of the week, so we decided to check out some of the links and games. I'm sharing them here, because they're awesome resources, whether you're homeschooling or sending your child attend public school.
Interactive Dolche Word site - organized by grade level: http://www.quiz-tree.com/Sight-Words_main.html
Starfall - awesome site for reading basics: http://www.starfall.com/
Math Activities: http://www.internet4classrooms.com/math_elem_index.htm
Word Wall Activities and Suggestions: http://www.teachingfirst.net/wordwallact.htm

I am still sad that homeschooling just didn't work out for us. Honestly, they're not doing anything in class that I couldn't have done from home, but

Rainbow Hair

Well, Terra definitely grasps concepts quickly, and has a great memory, which I knew on a certain level... but it's been reinforced in my mind. The Rainbow Hair poem is committed to her memory, as are the Dolche Words for this week. She's totally able to be told "long line, short curve" etc and make most all of the alphabet correctly now. She already knew and wrote her letters, but typically started at the bottom, or made some backwards (d/b) or upside down (M/W) - but since she took a peek at Handwriting Without Tears, she's suddenly much more likely to make the letters correctly.

She's also learning months of the year and days of the week between home and school, as well as getting a real handle on the basics of time within 5 minutes of us playing with the clock I bought for her Learning Wall.

She's learning so much, so fast, and so dang effortlessly, I'm just so proud!

Tuesday, 1st day of a short 2nd week.

She was officially assigned her first list of Dolch sight words today:
a I me

They were on the Moodle page over the weekend, and we added them to the wall and talked about them. The website also had a list of what the class work would be focusing on this week. I've never heard of writing without tears, but it makes such good sense, I can't believe I'm just finding out about it.

Another green smiley, and if she gets one every day, she'll get another reward on Saturday. Don't know what yet, but I'm sure she'll come up with something!

Labor Day Night

Well, the three day weekend was fun, except for Terra asking, "Do I have school tomorrow!?" every day! We went to the park on Saturday to reward her for all the green smilies. Man was it hot! Then we went to IHOP for dinner, where, in case you didn't know it, for the month of September, kids 12 and under eat free!

We worked a bit on her new poem "Rainbow Hair." too. It's a little longer and harder to memorize, and I assume it will require a bit more work to be able to get it down pat.

Rainbow Hair

Rainbow purple
Rainbow blue
Rainbow green and yellow too
Rainbow orange
Rainbow red
Rainbow colors on my head
Colors, colors, everywhere!
I like rainbows in my hair.

It's so cute when she repeats it with me though! We've created a Learning Wall - totally low-tech, with all of her (color coded) color words, and her number words, her poems, a clock, a calendar, etc... as she does this poem, she points at the color words. She came up with that idea, but it's really helping her with the memorization, as well as sneaking in some familiarity with her color words :)

End of the First Week

Holey moley, the first week is done already. She only attended 3 days but in those three days, she had a perfect record in green smilies, rode the bus all by herself 3 times, earned herself a trip to the park tomorrow, made lots of new friends, memorized her bus number, her lunch number and her September poem and, seemingly matured about 5 years.

It's a long weekend, no school Monday, it's Labor Day. She's actually upset that next week will be a short week!

Back to School

Terra was feeling much better and was excited all over again to go to school this morning. She had to be a car rider in the morning but got to ride the bus home - finally! Oh my goodness she was thrilled!

So far, she swears she has not had to do a bit of work, and Ms. Mullins hasn't taught her a thing. Apparently, Ms. Mullins is much sneakier about teaching than I was when I was homeschooling last year. Brilliant woman I tell ya!

She has a poem each week to memorize - it helps with fluency. This week she's learned "September"

September

In September
for a while
I will ride a crocodile
down the chicken soup Nile
Paddle once
Paddle twice
Paddle chicken soup with rice.

The poems are all listed on the teacher's Moodle page so I've been working on it with her at home, but she swears she hasn't worked on it in class. Maybe they've just been taking it easy because it's their first week, and, really, today was only her second day since she was sick...

Anyway, we've been working on this from home, and she does know it by heart.

I have been really struggling with "letting go" she's my baby, the last child... my Earth Angel, the child I never intended to send to public school. I don't know what to do with an empty house, this is the first time I've had no children at home since I had Tommy 20 years ago... but honestly, I think I'm struggling even more with just how much and how quickly Terra is changing. Wow. Bittersweet. I'm very proud, but a little sad to see such a sudden transformation. Luckily, she's adjusting more seemlessly than I am!

Sick already!?

Terra was sick, running a fever, and stayed home from school. I was grateful that despite the fever, she was able to be up and around and not feeling terrible. She wasn't happy about having to stay home, but at least she wasn't experiencing any nasty symptoms.

Wow, Terra's First Day

First full day of kindergarten. Wow.

There were some issues for some reason with getting her assigned to a bus, so we drove her in. She was disappointed to be a car rider. She was just so excited to really be going, so proud to be a big girl who goes to school like her sister and brother. She was very thoughtful -- she got 3/4 of the way down the hall, stopped and turned around, making sure we saw her as she waved goodbye. We'd teased her about going to the half day of testing without saying goodbye, and she wanted to make sure she said goodbye this time.

While we were there we picked up the paperwork for me to become a classroom volunteer. There's a rigorous application process, an in-depth investigation into each volunteer's criminal and employment histories, I even had to give professional references. I got to give them some great names as business references, Cami Walker, and Daryn Kagan. That was fun lol. Anyway, I am volunteering to show my gratitude to this awesome school (several of my older children attended there as well) and to a teacher who I am extremely excited about. Hopefully, I'll be accepted!

Last Day Before the Nest Empties

This was the last day -- the last day before my youngest laast child one went off to real live full time kindergarten that is. We attended her Kindergarten orientation, met her teacher and many of her classmates, toured the classroom, picked up the inevitable and unavoidable system required packet-of-a-million-pages, and listened to Ms Mullins talk about how she ran her classroom, her personal philosophies, the class rules, etc...

One thing that made me very happy to hear is that much of the parent-teacher communication will be done electronically, rather than on paper. No more wads and wads of newsletters, notes, pamphlets, flyers, etc... we can go to her Moodle page to see new information, find out what the homework was, etc. Very eco-friendly, and I'm glad. Truth is, that's the kind of junk that s a complete waste of paper, and of space in my house, and my garbage can. It's the kind of stuff that clutters my desk, my refrigerator - and begins, eventually to overwhelm and stress me out.

Thank you Ms Mullins for being green, it may save my sanity!

Terra's First Day - evaluation 1/2 day

Terra actually started school today. Just a half day for evaluation and teacher assignment. She's been crying for months about not wanting to go to school, so we were really prepared for the epitome of the nightmare first day.