Parent Teacher Interview

This is a total mommy-brag post, so if you're not into that, this is your warning!

We met with Little Fox's Teacher last night, Mrs. G. Pretty much the first thing we asked her was about his attention and focus, and she said that he DOES get distracted easily, but not to the point that she's worried right now, which is great.

Then, we got down to business. Mrs G said that Little Fox is very kind to his friends, and that he's friends with everyone. He's very helpful and polite. Socially, he's just fine.

In reading/language, he knows 24 of the 30 sight words for Kindergarten already! She said he knows things that she wouldn't expect them to know until May or June. He knows all of his letters, upper and lower case, and is doing well with printing. She had a progress report thing and everything was checked off, except one thing. Rhyming. Little Fox just can not get the rhyming concept. We've been working on his at home for months and months now. He can identify rhyming words when given to him, but he can't come up with them on his own. Usually, he will say a word with the same starting sound.

Mrs G is going to start sending home little books for the kids, and she said that she's going to have to choose carefully for Little Fox because most of the books will be too easy for him.

She shows us his story journal, where they have to meet 5 criteria to get 5 stars. Name, picture, 3 colours, letters/words, and something else I can't remember. Little Fox's stories are just awesome. They are, of course, simple, one sentence things, but I can't wait to get this journal at the end of the year and look through it all. Mrs G showed us a few pages, and one of them said "I stayed up late". Well, that's what he TRIED to write, but it said something like "I sd p lt" which shows her that he's hearing the start and end sounds of the words. She said a lot of the kids are just writing random letters, still. Little Fox needs to be a little more neat and careful with his writing and drawing. Mrs G said that he rushes through things just to get it finished. We'll work on that with more colouring at home.

Next, Mrs G showed us the progression of his drawings. The first drawing of himself was all green, but he did have all of his body parts (head, torso, legs, arms). His most recent one used some different colours and had more details like hair. We've been working on that at home too... using more colours and using the right colours for things, instead of purple trees.

In math, they've been working on patterns. He did one worksheet that he did perfectly, and she showed us his workbook. She pointed out that Little Fox has taken the ABAB pattern further and will do patterns that are a little more "complex", like ABC patterns using shapes or colours (or both).

Mrs G said that she can tell that he's holding things back because he doesn't like to stand out. He's certainly been holding back from us, because I didn't know he could do these things!

I feel like we've been doing the right things at home. And it feels damn good to get that kind of validation. It's funny that just a few weeks ago, Little Fox and I had the "use the right colours" talk, and it just so happened to be the same time they were doing that at school. He's been really keen on colouring lately, so I'm going to use that to our advantage and get to him practice slowing down and being a bit more neat.  I guess the pattern games we play in the car will having to get changed to rhyming games. Or maybe I can combine them... Dig big pig dig big pig...

Overall, a great meeting. Mrs G is doing a great job, and Little Fox just loves her.

So, teachers out there (looking at you, Heather)... what kind of gifts do you like to get from your students at Christmas/end of year?