School Updates

Monday will be the 100th day of school for the girls. Allie, especially, is very excited about it. She has to bring in 100 of something to share as a snack and is begging for mini-marshmallows. I have a whole bag and while I don't necessarily want her eating them all, it would be nice to get them out of my pantry. Jaelyn had to make something with 100 somethings on it. We bought a package of cute shimmery pom poms and hot glued them on a baseball cap. It turned out really well. She's worried about having to count them in front of the class and losing track (since they aren't in rows). I told her as long as she ends on 100, she'll be fine.

We learned some sad news about her teacher yesterday. Mrs. M has been out on maternity leave and was supposed to be back in March. She's decided to stay out the rest of the year. I'm thrilled that she'll be able to stay at home with her baby girl, but I'm sad for Jaelyn. She was doing really well with Mrs. M and not having any of her chatty, not focused moments like last year. Well, report cards came home yesterday and there was a note from Jaelyn's new teacher, Mrs. W (who's out for 2 weeks with an emergency surgery - so we have a sub for the sub) and her reading teacher that they are both having trouble with her being chatty, silly and not focused. She's still doing well though. Her reading is continuing to improved. They don't give the kids real grades (maybe that'll start in 2nd grade). Instead they give CE (consistently evident), D (developing), NE (not evident). Jaelyn's marks were split between CE and D. She's having the most trouble with telling time in math, but according to the teacher's notes, everyone is.

I was super impressed with Allie's report card. In language arts, she's split pretty evenly between CE and D, but in math, she has almost all CEs. I think the biggest thing for me to see were her marks in personal and social development. She got Ds for "managing change" and "shows increasing self-control." Everything else like "follows rules," "completes work independently" and "interacts positively with classmates" was CE. That's huge - especially when I think back to that first month of school.

Caden loves preschool. I was going to switch him to afternoons next year. It was totally selfish - I just can't seem to get things done (mainly grocery shopping) with our current schedule and next year will be 3 days instead of 2. I had to turn in his registration a few weeks ago and not a single one of his friends was switching so I caved to peer pressure and I'm letting him stay in the mornings. It'll make starting again next year with a new teacher easier if all of his current friends are there with him.