No Volume Control

We had our parent teacher conference last night with Ellie's teacher - Miss St. John. She is a young teacher, and is very nice. First here is Ellie's "report" from her teacher :

Ellie is a delightful little girl. She is friendly and cooperative. She seems happy at school and is settling into daily routines. Her willingness to participate during circle time is developing each day. Ellie is very proud to print her name and takes pride in her work. She names each letter in order. Ellie is very independent in her dressing skills and managing her lunch and school bag.
Ellie seems to really enjoy French and is one of our best participants during circle time. She participates well in group discussion and repeats new vocabulary willingly. Ellie has a good memory for our songs and also a very good vocabulary recall.

Ellie's class is a split JK/SK class. And we are very thankful that she is in such a class because now it's very easy for her teacher to let her do SK work, since she is teaching it anyways.
I wish i could have taken home Ellie's journal which her teacher started with the class - an activity that the kids could work on their own level - whether it be practicing their letters, or writing their name.. or in Ellie's case - writing full sentences!! Sure, some of the words are spelled wrong, but they are readable, and understandable, which is huge for a kid in JK.

And Miss St. John has been altering the curriculum to fit better with the wide range of kids in her class. So instead of paper & pencil work, she has created work centers that the kids can go to and work on different things at different levels.

To say Ellie loves school is a understatement. She has wanted to go to school since she was 18 months old.. Now she complains that she only goes 2 or 3 days a week. Every Tuesday and Thursday I hear the same thing - "why can't I go today??" And her love of school shows. She loves going, she loves learning, she loves playing, she loves her teacher. Her love of knowledge is what makes the teacher want to challenge her, and after talking to us, I'm sure Ellie will get more challenges.

We are very very proud of Ellie. And now we wait. We wait to see how she continues on in the school year. We wait to see how advance she becomes by the end of the year. And we wait to see if she will be going into SK next year or into Grade 1. We know it's early on in the year, but by month 3 of school, she is doing SK work at school, and grade 1 work at home. We encourage her to learn. We are proud to say that she is reading now. She can easily tackle level 1 readers, and is working on level 2 readers. She works on new words while Kat does her homework (and occasionally spoils Kat's learning opportunities by telling Kat what word it should be).

So a big "Hip Hip Hooray!" for Ellie!!


And next week will bring a post all about Kat after her parent teacher conference.