Parent Teacer Conferences

The girls had their parent teacher conferences the other night.  Here is the lowdown:

Eleanor - she is above and beyond in her class.  She has already mastered all of her Kindergarten concepts.  She can read, count to 100, knows all of her shapes, and can add and subtract pretty well.  Her teacher kept gushing about how I must work with her at home all the time, etc. and I felt a bit guilty because I did when she was like 2, but since then, she has pretty much done it all on her own.  I guess I can thank Payton.  She is also the best helper and will help the other kids if they are struggling.  And she follows directions a t. She is still struggling a bit with the whole "I miss my Mom" thing, but we are not sure how to deal with that.  It usually happens about once a week, or more than that if it was a long weekend, or if she was tired.  This week she cried 3 days.  Her teacher said she usually just needs a hug, then to be left alone, and she works it out and will join the class again.  And then at pick up, as soon as she sees me, the tears start again.  Part of me feels bad for her, but the other part just wonders why she has to cry.  It is mid-November and still going on, so we will see how the rest of the year goes.  But, I am glad she is doing really well in school and that I don't have to worry about that part.

Payton - She is doing good too.  Her teacher first laughed and said she thinks Payton wants her job as the teacher.  She loves to tell others what to do.  ha ha.  But her teacher said she does it in a loving way, and just to help out, so it works.  She is reading first in her class at an end of 4th grade level.  She enjoys reading too, so that helps.  She is above in everything else, especially math.  Which I find funny, because Payton always says she hates math and must pretend to struggle at home with it, but at school, she is top of the class.  She is also a great speller (like me!) and has aced all of her spelling tests.  Her only struggle is handwriting.  She has chicken scratch.  At this age, I was writing hearts and swirlies with my name, but Payton could care less.  She just is in a hurry.  Her handwriting looks like a boys.  But, her teacher said she is going to emphasize the importance of having nice handwriting and see if she will take the time to write nice.  We will see. 

It is such a relief that the girls are doing good in school so far and we don't have to spend hours a day trying to learn things.  They just seem to grasp most new things they learn.  They are 100% responsible too.  They come home each day and clean out their backpacks and lunches, put everything where it belongs, and leaves a small stack of papers for me that I need to read.  They make it so much easier on me.