First Week Down - Check!

The first week of school was a great success for our Miss B.

She came home filled with new stories and information every day. She earned six or seven "fuzzies" during the week for various helpful acts and good behavior. Mrs. Cook and Mrs. Moore have multiple methods of rewarding good behavior - and discouraging poor behavior. As 17 year veterans of Kindergarten together, and full classes (Libby has 21 in hers!), they run a tight ship.

A yellow card earns five minutes sitting out of recess, and a red card earns a call to Mom & Dad! Libby hasn't even had her card switched to yellow - phew. And she "banked" her fuzzies last week. Every five fuzzies you get, on Friday, you have the opportunity to turn them in for a treat - at five, ten, etc. the prizes get bigger. At five, you get five Skittles! Libby banked hers last week.

On Thursday night I got to go and heard directly from her teachers - and of course hear the whole PTA spiel for the first time. Fortunately I'm already a member, and a member of the Foundation, too.

But it was best to hear from her teachers. They are going to be doing a lot of journaling. Journaling for math, journaling for writing, a journal of poetry, too. The poetry journal came home over the weekend and Libby had memorized and was reading parts of the poem. This week, she starts her sight word tests on Friday. And of course, she has 20 minutes of reading a day. Now, as we start, that's mostly reading to her. But she brought home two books today that she created today, her "A" book - lots of words and pictures she drew with the letter "a," and then she brought another where she drew pictures. Part of her homework was reading it to us. We practiced a number of times and she got better every time. That sweet girl!

We also practiced her sight words. We went through the list, and she said the words. Then, I put the list away, called out the words, she spelled them and then wrote them in all lowercase and all uppercase. All 10 words! With few mistakes. Her teacher is also big on handwriting, so we are working on that, too. She's already improving. And she wrote her name three times for homework, too. Part of the point of the journals it to be able to track her progress over the year, and we sure will be able to do that, I just know.

She still says she needs to "get a friend." But she's enjoying her class and I met one of her classmates, Reagan, on Thursday night, who asked about her and why she wasn't there and what she was doing. (She had been napping during the afternoon, and she was helping Daddy put Matthew to bed.) She's been reading the "Little House" series and we're already on the third book, "Farmer Boy" about Almanzo. Anyway, Brianna has apparently had a rough first few days. She broke a tooth today, and got hurt on some play thing last week during recess. She also got a red card today. And Libby evidently sat with her on the bus on the way home today.

So far, no problems or trouble on the bus (not that I expect any). It was, though, a bit late at pick-up today. But the last few days it has been consistently five minutes early to drop-off. Better be there on time to wait for her! Though I appreciate some good neighbors who would take great care of her if one of us was a few minutes behind. We all traded info for "just in case" days.

Libby also came home last week talking about having friends over for a sleep over. She has chosen Leah and Sydney, so we will have to get them over soon. The date we originally looked at didn't work on their end, so we will find another one! She wants to eat pizza, paint nails, watch a movie and eat pancakes for breakfast. It seems that she heard Madison talking about one on the bus. And Taylin has been looking out for her, which I very much appreciate and think is just precious, too.

Libby has also been to the library and checked out a book at school, and today they had Science Lab in addition to Computer lab!

This new type of homework is going to be a slight adjustment for us, but we'll get in the swing soon. Matthew is in Rome this week while all the work goes on here at the house, so that gives us more afternoon wiggle room. But I miss that little guy so much already!