Brown Blessings: Parent/ Teacher Conference

Today was our parent/teacher conference with Ryker's school. Just yesterday when I picked him up Mrs. Steele said that he had worked on reading and writing his sight words with Mrs. Skinner earlier in the day. Mrs. Skinner said he did the very best out of the entire group. :-)

The conference went well with no major surprises. He has really grown and matured through the year according to his teachers and they commented on his ever-present and VERY strong imagination! He is doing great socially and his small and large motor skills are right on target. He still needs help zipping some coats from time to time and we haven't even begun to work on tying shoes (Mommy fail???)

Mrs. Steele said he can be a bit wiggly sometimes when he should be listening but for a still-4-year-old boy I'm saying that's NORMAL! She said he gets bored with some things (like certain songs) at times too. He is an opinionated little guy and will tune out if it's boring. This boring thing applies to flashcards too...specifically alphabet flashcards. Flashcards are just plain boring in his opinion. When they tested him on his alphabet she said he was so excited to have one on one time with her he was too interested in telling her stories to concentrate much on the letters. However, at home, we make a game out of it and he usually gets all but about 14 (out of 52-both upper and lowercase letters), so I'd say he's doing pretty well. We need to continue working on his letters through the summer and some of his numbers. He did great on sorting, shapes, patterns, and even his colors which is a relief given his colorblindness.

We've seen a major change in him in the last 6 weeks or so at home too. He has cut out his afternoon nap and spends some time with me working on school things. He asks now how to spell words and can sound them out and write them when he wants. He made tickets to his "show" the other day with little help from me. His handwriting and attention span has improved greatly as well. He's showing a desire to do more and more things independently. I think as he nears his 5th birthday he's just growing up. Part of me hates and the other part is glad to see he is growing and maturing as he should. As we struggled a bit with the decision to start him in kindergarten or not these changes have been reassuring that we are making the right decision for him.