Bragging about my kids!

Well fall report cards have come out so it is time to brag a bit about my wonderful kids. The 3 in school are doing very well overall.

David's report card was good, but he doesn't get letter grades yet. Rather they list the skills he is learning in various subject areas and give out either a B (beginning), DV (developing) or IN (independent). He has a few INs, one B (for his handwriting, which is just atrocious) and the rest DVs. Pretty good! Here are some of the comments (summarized) I heard from his teachers at the parent-teacher conference I went to earlier this week. “He is a very sweet boy. He loves the number searches we do in class (note from Amy: they are like word searches only with numbers instead) and is good at them. He'll even ask for another when he is done. He loves to read when his work is finished. Mrs. Knake (his teacher) LOVES that he hugs her before he leaves every day. He is very good at math and problem-solving and can do problems in his head. He likes to go to the board and show his work; she likes that he is comfortable doing that and has the confidence in himself to volunteer for that. He is also very hard on himself - if he loses something or doesn't do something right he will apologize to Mrs. Knake and is very upset about it. He also will frequently ask if he can help her with something.” What a great kid!!!!

Rachel also had a good report card, although she also gets the B, DV, or IN instead of actual letter grades. Hers was mostly DVs and INs. She got INs in reading which is awesome. I just LOVE that my kids all love to read and are good at it. Yahoo!! I haven't had her parent-teacher conference yet so I'll write more about her later.

Rose got a report card with letter grades for the first time this year. She was very nervous about how she did, but came home with all A's!!!!! That's my girl!! I am so proud of her! Her parent-teacher conference was interesting, but not quite as informative as I'd hoped. In 4th grade, the kids start switching classes so the teacher she has for homeroom only teaches her science and couldn't comment much about the other subjects. There is another teacher that does social studies and language arts (they used to call this "english" when I was in school. what happened to that?) . For math, Rose is in the ELO program. I can't remember exactly what that stands for but back in my day they called that the gifted program. So she goes with probably a dozen of the 4th graders to yet another teacher who does math with them. I got to meet Mrs. Smith )the ELO teacher) and see her classroom. She is doing some seriously fun stuff in there, games and such. They are currently learning fractions and will be moving on to decimals soon. They do some basic algebra and story problems. It's a good thing Phil likes math, because frankly, I don't like helping her with all her math homework. Anyway. . . she is getting a 93% in ELO math so far. On her report card, the other teacher did comment that she should be improving her vocabulary by choosing books to read that are more advanced and can challenge her more. Right now she is plowing through the Little House series. Do any of you have suggestions about something that's more advanced reading than that but has subject matter that's appropriate for a 10-year-old. That's the problem I'm running into - some of the books I've found have things in them that I'm not necessarily comfortable having her read about until she's older.

Matthew is not in school yet, but knows all of his letters, basic shapes, basic colors and numbers, can count to 20. He loves to have books read to him and can even identify a couple states. We have this USA map puzzle that he likes to put together. He can identify Ohio, Kentucky and Texas. Yeah Matt :-)

I am just so proud of my kids and love them very much!!!!