1st Quarter Conferences

First quarter is over and we are officially settled at this school. (at least I haven't gotten lost on the grounds in at least a week, so I guess that says something!) I was left to go it alone for both of them because B was on an awful shift for this week's exercise. Ugghh! Oh well, I managed fine. T's teacher is way impressed with his wide variety of strengths and smarts but did mention it would be easier if he would show it in his classwork. He knows so much and he has been bringing us home 60% and the like on several papers. Ugghh again. He is rushed, it's obvious by alot of the papers he brings like that. Most of time it is multiple choice and he doesn't take time to read it through all the way. We will work with him on that one of course. She is impressed with how very sensitive and caring he is, which of course I just loved! He has such a sweet nature to him and I love it when it is recognized through his meltdowns that he is only occasionally having now. Definitely an improvement but needs to stop altogether. The good news is (despite the low classwork grades) he only missed Honor Roll by 1 grade. The C in Science caused him to miss it. I, personally, am not upset! I never even came close to an Honor Roll so I am just beside myself with pride! My boy is a Genius! There is a "smart kid" program that school has. It is called the SUN program. His teacher spoke about it in beginning of school year. Her and I agree that emotionally and socially, he will need to improve alot before being able to join this program. Academically speaking, he would make it in a heartbeat...but it is a significantly higher stress level than that of the average school day. He tends to do his worst under pressure. So, we agreed that over remainder of this school year we will both work with him on improving him in these areas and if she sees good progress made, she is going to put in recommendation for him to start 4th grade in this SUN program. MY child....in a smart kid program??? Somebody pinch me!!!
Andrew is on a different tangent, unfortunately. He suffered some setbacks at the hands of his Kindergarten teacher last year and is paying the price now. Kindergarten did not focus on reading or writing as much as it focused on social and art. Basically, it lacked structure and good foundation building. So he has been deemed behind on a few things. He was put into a reading program to help catch him up on that. I am so glad they had that for him because honestly, I think he would be lost without it. He didn't grasp much about reading at the end of Kindergarten and if it weren't for T, he would probably still be way more in the dark. During the move this summer, T worked with him as well as us and T more than us got him close to caught up. He is such a caring big brother most of the time. He does have his moments...but so do all big brothers. Anyway, so A brought home a D in writing. This is the area he is struggling most. His writing is usually all over the place and at least 50% of his letters are backwards. While First Grade is assuring us that this is a phase and is normal, I am desperately trying to move him out of it. There has been cases of Dislexia in our family in recent generations and I am anxious to see that he is not another case. He also brought home a C in Science, but it was assured the Science test that is now being required is a hard one for first graders. (why they give the test to them, I don't know.)

Over all, I was okay with the outcome. Andrew makes up for his setbacks with his math smarts and his brown-eyed charm! Trevor impressed me yet again....and we will work on his problems as the year progresses.