This past Tuesday, I went to Gwyn's conference. It is not the first one I have had for her. She started them in the baby room at UCDC. But this is a new school, with a more streamlined assessment. UCDC focused on whole-child development. The new school focuses on Kindergarten skills, like shapes, letters, numbers, counting, etc.
Her report was amazing. She gets along with other students and is respectful to the teacher. She always raises her hand, and follows directions with minimal instruction. She plays with other students. She already has a friend, Ian, whom she talks about all the time.
Here is what I was told about Gwyn:
Counting: she can count to 100. Well, they stopped her at 100. She has counted up to 40 for me, but not that high.
Number recognition: she is the only one in her class who recognizes numbers higher than 10. Her teacher said that she reads the numbers on the calendar.
Letter recognition: she knows all uppercase letters, and 24 lowercase letters. (Not q and r.)
Patterns: she knows ababab patterns, as well as aabaab, abcabc, and aabbaabb.
Colors: she knows all that they asked about.
Shapes: for some reason, she only knew 2. But she does this at home as well. She used to know them.
Funny story about colors: a boy was telling the teacher the colors, and when he got to grey, he said "dirty white." Gwyn leaned into the conversation and told him "It is grey." He replied "I know." She told him very seriously "Then you should have said that." Her turn to name colors was later, and when she got to grey, she said "Dirty white. Just kidding. I know it is grey." With some attitude! I asked the teacher about her attitude, and she said it was not a concern, she just has some personality and is so nice and respectful. So we laughed about it.
Gwyn has also asked to learn to read, both in school and at home. So, without knowing what the other was doing, both her teacher and I started giving Gwyn sight word books to read. She LOVES reading at night, and has her books next to her bed. She is starting to recognize the difference between words and letters on the page, and can name a few sight words. I even hear her say the starting sound of the word if she forgets what it is. For example, she forgot the word carrot, but I heard her say "That's a c. Kh, kh, kh.... carrot!" So much fun to see that.
Her teacher said that Gwyn is showing the same interest in reading. The teacher told Gwyn, if she wanted to that she could read to the class. Gwyn said she would read if she got fruit snacks. The teacher agreed, but couldn't figure out why Gwyn requested fruit snacks. A few days later she remembered a high school student who had visited a few weeks before. He had fruit snacks after he read to the class.
I was told that Gwyn always raises her hand, plays well with others, knows what to do with routines, and is usually the first one to do things. She is currently in a class with 3, 4 and 5 year-olds, but in the afternoons Gwyn is now going to go to the class next door since those are the 4 and 5 year-olds heading off to Kindergarten next year. This will help supplement her curriculum. She needs to be around kids closer to her age. I am happy Gwyn is happy and that she is doing well!
Fun memory I don't want to forget:
At UCDC, in the toddler room (1 year-olds) Gwyn was knocking kids over her first few weeks in the new room. She would walk up to kids and push them over. Her teacher had to talk to me about it, and I had to tell Gwyn to stop. Then a few days later I watched Gwyn play with her brothers. She would walk up to them, push them, and they would all laugh and wrestle. Gwyn was just trying to wrestle at school. We had to explain it was something for home. How cute is that?
