Joe's Spring Conference

"The best part of kindergarten is making words.  I like making words because I like working with letters."

In other news, this week brought spring conferences at Joe's school.  We picked him up at Kid's Place Thursday evening and all sat down with Mrs. D to hear how things were going.  So much to celebrate, Fans!  Our Hero is much improved on the "work habits" (begin and complete work on time, organize work and belongings) front.  He's always willing to try things on this own.  He is still sometimes too easily influenced by the troublemakers, but Mrs. D stressed that Joe is always willing to own up to his misdeeds; he's very honest.  He's also very good at listening (he's not "a blurter"), but Mrs. D hopes he'll share his thoughts more at group time.  Oh group time!  The bane of introverts everywhere.  On the academic front, it was fun to learn that Joe not only knows all the 50 kindergarten sight words, but all but one of the 100 additional first grade sight words.  He's reading books now that have language patterns more like written than spoken language and contain more abstract ideas or those which are more removed from the world he knows and the full range of punctuation.  In advance of the conferences, Joe and his classmates had to write a sentence or two about what they liked best about kindergarten.  You can see that Joe likes all things letters best, but he likes math, science, and Spanish, too.  He's on track to go to first grade.  Most important: Our Hero likes school and has made friends.