A Tribute To My Boys

At the last was Parent/Teacher Conferences that were very recent I had a good chat with each of the boys' teachers. I also registered Jacob for kindergarten where the kindergarten teachers conducted an "assessment" of each child entering Kindergarten. They were AMAZED at how much Jacob already knew. He knows letters, letter sounds, how to write his name correctly (uppercase then lowercase), how to count to more than 100, writing numbers correctly, saying the 50 states in alphbetical order, developing sorting skills, developing math facts (additionn), trying to read the words all around him--he is so ready for Kindergarten thanks to his brains and wonderful pre-school teacher, Teacher Barbara! I am proud of that little bugger!

Thomas' 1st grade teacher informed me that she gets some her favorite quotes from him. Yeah, I know, he comes up with some pretty great things to say. Mrs. Snow shared this one with me--The class was having an indoor "snowball" fight with wadded up paper that had an addition problem written on it. When they caught a snowball they were to un-wad the paper and solve the math fact, crumple it up, and toss the paper snowball to someone else. Thomas sat down with his "snowball", opened it up, and since the writing on it was in pencil it was smeared from all of the crumpling and uncrumpling, he stared at it very intently, squinted his eyes, cocked his head and said to himself in a very serious tone, "What the hell is this?" We had a good little laugh about that one, but it makes me wonder what her other favorite things he has said are. What a kid! His only goal this term is to eat most of his lunch.

David's teacher is a dream! Mrs. White has been so great this year in working with David. He is a really good speller and reader, however, math is NOT a strong subject in him. He is showing signs of being socially inept (to a certain degree) and that is a challenge we need to help him overcome. Poor kid, he is such a small guy and it makes him an easy target for bullies. Stupid bullies! He has struggled a bit with writing, but he brought this short story home today and I thought it was pretty great:

Rip Long Beard
by David Laney

When I was trapesen through the woods I met a man named Rip. This is what he looked like. He was a short lad with a long beard as white as snow with a buckskin coat and a pair of moccasains. He had leather bags all over his body and was carrying a big Fifty. He could rassle a bear with one arm behind his back and kill a cougar with a knife and kill a herd of buffalo.

The End

Pretty great story!!