Parent Conferences

I will cherish the years of preschool parent teacher conferences. The early years when the worst of your problems are cutting to the front of the line (Cazin) or not wanting to dance around in music class (Julia). These are the days when you can feel somewhat good about your parenting skills.

Where they are:

"Julia enjoys playing with her friends and spending time creating art projects. Julia continues to need encouragement to participate in music as well as during song/movement time in the classroom. There have also been a few times when Julia has been asked a question or asked to repeat something and has refused to do so. Julia is capable of doing these tasks, she just chooses not to. Julia is excited about learning to read and is recognizing familiar works in text. With reading, she is ready to take off. Julia is working on counting to 20 correctly as well as counting a group of objects."

We have been working on the participating in class thing...apparently it is getting better. I often tell her doing things we don't want to do is a part of growing up. If we are lucky, sometimes we surprise ourselves and actually find that we like the task, subject, whatever. But most of the time I tell her it is like me taking out the garbage. I hate to do it, but I have to so our house doesn't smell like last night's take-out. Now I did find myself telling her teachers a similar thing my mother told the nuns when I was Julia age. Instead of saying spank (which is what my mom said), I told them not to hesitate to be firm or stern with her when she is being indignant or stubborn. Oh, Sister Mary Catherine where are you now?

Miss Priss. She sits like this all the time now.

With Cazin "academics are NOT a problem." He knows his shapes, colors, numbers, letters, etc. Because of his love of shapes (and relentlessly pulling them off the wall when he wasn't supposed to and trying to match them on a different poster) Ms. Betty created a big shape matching poster. "He is the first to give an answer. In fact, he doesn't like to give his classmates a chance to answer." What "we are working on with Cazin" is not cutting to the front of the line when we stop walking, doing art projects, responding when his name is called and washing hands, but "Cazin is so easy going. Nothing seems to bother him. If someone takes his toy, he just moves on to the next thing. And he just LOVES books. He could read all morning." Her next statement made me smile. "I noticed that he easily gets so excited. It just bubbles out of him." She is talking about the jumping and flapping his hands thing. When Cazin was an infant, I called it revving up the motorcycle.

Who says dressing boys isn't fun?

As promised, a photo of Ella's new look. Mike finally broke me down to have her bangs trimmed. Below, a poor blackberry photo of the event.