Wednesday Preschool: Animals

The theme for preschool today was baby animals/pets. Robert came home with this puzzle that he refused to color.

Monday Preschool: Halloween

Robert wore his Thomas the Train custom to preschool today at Chelsie's house. He brought home a small pumpkin of candy and a sucker with a the black fussy spider attached to it. It looks like they did a Halloween shape rubbing activity. He also has jack-o-lantern matching cards. He enjoyed preschool a lot today.

Kindergarten: Week 8

There was Parent-Teacher Conference this week. Mrs. Thomas had only nice things to say about Hailey. Hailey is the most advance Kindergartner in her class as far as reading at least. She's missing a couple of sounds to the different letters of the alphabet. She's only counting to 25ish and Mrs. Thomas wants her to count to 100 by the end of the school year.  She encourages us to help her read and get her as advance as Hailey will let us. The kids get assessed once a month. Here is what they are assessed on:

Count five objects

Count to 10

Identify numerals 1-5

Name a square and circle

Count number of words in a sentence

Holds a book and turns pages properly

Identifies letters in name

Identifies words that rhyme

Writes name

She aced all these and I'm surprised how simple the these tasks are even for someone in Kindergarten. I am pretty sure Robert can do all those things now expect for writing his name. I am glad that I now know what is Kindergarten level material and what they are expected to know. I'm thankful that Mrs. Thomas sees Hailey potential and eagerness to learn and encourages it. It seems like in this school, students (especially the 1st graders) are bounced around into other classrooms to help find activities closer to their level.

We also talked about Madeline. They are in the math group together and they do get in trouble for talking.  Madeline has a very dominating personality and challenges the teacher a lot. It's hard to see Hailey limit herself to one friend and I'm glad I can go to the class and point out that there are other people to play with also.  I hope Hailey can be the good example to Madeline and not pick up on bad habits.

Here's the papers she brought home this week.

 The paper says 5+1+6   5+5=10   5+2=7   5+3=8   5+4=9

Preschool: Pumpkins and Scarecrows

Here our the crafts Robert did at preschool.

Preschool: Harvest

Robert had preschool at Jenna's house this week. They had a candy cornucopia and made a paper one. Wikipedia says "The cornucopia (in Latin also cornu copiae) or horn of plenty is a symbol of abundance and nourishment, commonly a large horn-shaped container overflowing with produce, flowers, nuts, other edibles, or wealth in some form. In modern depictions, the cornucopia is typically a hollow, horn-shaped wicker basket filled with various kinds of festive fruit and vegetables. In North America, the cornucopia has come to be associated with Thanksgiving and the harvest."

I love Robert's attempt to write his own name.

Kindergarten: Week 7

An interesting thing happened this week. On Wednesday, Hailey can home with a little plastic pink necklace from Madeline. I thought it was a little weird but didn't think much of it after I made sure Hailey wasn't giving out her things. Then on Thursday, Hailey came home with an art project Madeline did a while ago in class, a homemade bracelet, a mirror, and an ICarly make compact all from Madeline. When I asked about them, Hailey told me they were her prizes for listening only to Madeline. Now I really don't like what's going on but was at a lost of what to do.  Should I really get involved? Hailey isn't interested in giving anything to Madeline so it is still a problem? After asking other moms on facebook about what I should do, I ended up just telling Hailey she needs to give it all back. I explained that we can draw things for our friends but we don't give or receive toys.  She handled it just fine and gave everything back on Friday.

I happened to be volunteering on Friday also. At least in her reading group that they do in the morning for almost two hours, Hailey and Madeline are separated.  It is useful for me to go in and get to know Hailey's classmates so I can help encourage her to be friends with everyone.

Mrs. Thomas actually had a lot of volunteers this morning. I was there, another dad was there, and Mrs. Thomas' little brother who was on a break at his college was there. Her brother and I worked together on the art project that day. They were finger painting little egg cartons black to turn them into spiders.  It got very messy and it took both of us to help with the mess. I went around writing their names and her brother stayed on top of washing hands. If they got done quickly, they could draw a picture of what they saw during their fall walk they took earlier in the week.  Some kids needed even more help filling up the time, so we talked about Halloween and what they were going to be. It is fun to interact with this age group. One girl, drew a picture of the road and sidewalk for want she saw on their walk. She ran out of time to draw more but it was fun to tease her that she was just looking down the whole time (she is a very smart first grader and understood the light teasing). A lot of kids talked about seeing a dog. Hailey drew some birds by making a V in the sky. However, when she was talking about her picture it sounded like she was saying she saw beavers instead of v-birds.

 I think in the first square Hailey tried to write I like leaves falling down without the teacher's example. Then the teacher wrote the sentence, then she rewrote it also.

 Hailey enjoyed doing the paths and did a great job at getting from one point to the other.

 Darlene pointed out that doing dot-to-dot pages can be tough for some first graders (she taught first grade one year). They have seemed to come to her very easily.

Preschool: Weather

On Monday at Edmund's house they talked about the weather. They made rain with the cotton balls. They also drew a picture of their favorite type of weather. Robert drew snow.

I'm not sure what they did on Wednesday but Robert came home with a bag of fruit loops and was taking about rainbows.