Back to School

Mid-August, our 3rd grader started back to school! Kaylen really enjoys school. She does well with the structure of school. She excels in reading, and does well in math as well. She enjoys reading about all sorts of things, including science, geography, biographies, and fiction. Her teacher is working together with us to keep her challenged this year. She doesn’t like to be challenged, but if we keep on top of her, she does well, and then is happy to have learned something new after she’s completed a challenging task.All three kids also started going to a differenet daycare the same day Kaylen started school. They are enjoying their new surroundings, but also many familiar faces, as several staff and children from their old daycare are there. Kaylen attends before/after school, and all day on no-school days.

Elijah & Josephine started out in the same preschool classroom, but are now in different preschool classrooms, because enrollment increased enough to necessitate a second preschool classroom. I haven’t gotten a good feel for the new curriculum yet. I was expecting them to start units on the letters of the alphabet, but I think it’s set up a little bit differently.

Elijah's class is working on numbers this week, and ordering them (I don't think he knows his numbers yet though). One other week they talked about themselves and their names (how they got their names, what they mean, etc.) Last week they did some activities about fruit - pumpkins, blueberries, etc. Josephine's class spent a week on colors, and another week on seasons of the year. They learned about ladybugs (that's the name of their classroom) one week also. This week they're learning about frogs.

Hmmmm... Might have to start supplementing with letter curriculum at home once the soccer schedule slows down.

Elijah is also continuing with speech therapy. His AEA therapist comes to his daycare for a half-hour one day per week. He enjoys when she comes, as he gets some special one-on-one attention. We’re also working with him at home on some of the same things she’s working with him on. We’re starting to see some improvements, but they’re slow in coming.

With the start of the school year, several of our extra-curricular activites have resumed. More on those later...

UPDATE: Apparently the October calendar got lost on my kitchen counter when we returned from vacation... Elijah's classroom started the letter-a-week this week! They have been doing the letter A today. Wednesdays they're supposed to bring an item that starts wtih the letter A. I didn't find out until today, but luckily I had his airtran wings pin from the airplane in the van, so I brought that in for him, so he could show the letter "a" that was on it, and tell how he got that on the airplane. :) No word on Josephine's classroom starting the letters of the alphabet yet. Still hoping...