Conferences

I had both Maggie and Tuttle's conferences today. I started with Maggie's conference first thing this morning at 9:15. Hers was more informal, but I was still able to get an insight into Maggie's attitude and interaction with her peers at school.

Apparently Maggie has a split personalilty: Home Maggie and School Maggie. She always follows directions, sits quietly and listens during Circle Time, and stays happy throughout the day at preschool. At home her threenager attitude comes out! :)

The teachers told me Maggie's favorite thing to do is find the letter of the week that is hidden around the room. Paper cutouts are placed in random spots, and the kids are instructed to hunt for them. Maggie usually finds all the letters immediately upon entering the room, and the teachers have to rehide them, so other students have a chance to join in the fun!

We need to work on Maggie holding a pencil correctly. I held my pencil with my entire fist in Kindergarten, so I guess this struggle is hereditary!

After spending the morning at an indoor playground warehouse, Maggie and I went to Tuttle's conference at his school while he was attending his first Run Club meeting.

I was eager to hear about his progress since we do not get very many school details out of Tuttle each day. I was very impressed with the evaluation that the teachers prepared. He can successfully recognize all the upper case letters and most of the lower case letters (with the exception of mixing up p/q and b/d on occassion.) He is very strong at identifying the beginning sound of a word, but we need to focus on following through with the end sound. I have noticed this in our practice at home, so I was not surprised. 

I like how Ms. Fleming instructs the students to write in their journals. It showed his progress even over the last six weeks. He initially would only write the first letter of each word to convey his thoughts: T C W T T S (The cat went to the store.), but now I could see that he is starting to sound out more letters within a word. I think this exercise really promotes learning to read, and I am excited to see what he can come up with as the year continues.

Tuttle's math skills were fabulous. He is already mastering skills that needed to be completed by the end of the year (count to 100 by 1's, count to 100 by 10's.) He recognized almost all of his shapes with the exception of a cube and a hexagon. He labeled it as an octagon. Who really needs a hexagon anyway? :)

I am relieved that math comes so naturally to him because he is learning it all in German this round. He can really focus on the German vocabulary instead of also learning a math skill for the first time.

We are very proud of Tuttle's behavior (no crayons so far!) and his participation in class. I knew Tuttle would love school, and his conference just confirmed what we already knew.