Loving Life

Don't these children look so happy?

These photos were taken several weeks ago during one of our lunches at the city's downtown Civic Plaza. This Sunday marks two years since we picked them up from their Russian orphanages and we became a family.

And they are thriving.

If a bragging mom isn't your cup of tea, then here's your chance to move on.

Today was our parent-teacher conference at the Montessori school. We went in early before school started and were still there as other students began filing in and class started. It's so cute to see the children in their school environment. As we were leaving they were sitting in their circle time, everyone attentively listening to the teacher.

We got really good reports!

Their teachers, including one who is also the school's director, told us that Anna came back to school this fall a different girl. Last year she had a few behavior concerns, which may have been partly due to her social immaturity. They said she likes to challenge herself with the jobs she selects. They said she has good work habits and wants to be learning things. Anna "blew us away" with her mastery of the alphabet, not just recognition of all upper and lower case letters but also 20 of the 26 primary letter sounds. They said some of their kindergarteners aren't even to this point yet. (What they probably don't know yet is that at home Anna is also spelling words based on sound, another thing I've been meaning to post about but haven't gotten around to. For a few months now we've been working together at sounding out the spelling of simple words: car, dog, mom, dad, cat, bus, etc.) Speaking of kindergarten, the teacher pointed out that Anna will be eligible for kindergarten screening in the spring, and she recommended Anna go through this whether we decide to send her to public school kindergarten or Montessori school kindergarten. She said Anna would pass the test with flying colors.

One of the teachers also commented about how Anna really likes her friends or how having friends is really important to her. Honestly, I can't remember in what context this was said because I think we were wrapping up things and my mind was moving on to the next question I was going to ask. But the idea of my little girl having actual friends (as opposed to just fellow students) is cute! And it's interesting, of course, because this causes me to imagine all sorts of troubles in the years ahead. You know what I'm talking about my female blog friends!

Anna mastered the sequencing "test" they gave her, something I remember she didn't do the best at last year. They normally show a student 3 or 4 picture cards and have them put the cards in order to tell a simple story. Since Anna got 4 correct, they gave her 6 cards, which she also got correct.

Speaking of sequencing and picture cards, I've got the cutest little story to share about Alexander. The teacher said she gave Alexander 3 cards to sequence. She showed them to us. They were of a boy making a snowman. She told Alexander to pretend he was the boy making the snowman and put the cards in order. He got the first one, which showed the boy packing a big ball of snow. But Alexander transposed the second and third cards. For the second card he picked a picture of the snowman melted, with his face and hat in the watery puddle. For the third card, he picked the picture of the completed snowman before it melted. When the teacher asked him why he put the cards in this order, Alexander said, "Because he brokted," pointing to the second card of the melted snowman, "And then I fixed him," pointing to the last card showing the completed snowman. Hey, at least he's got some kind of logic going on there!

As for the teachers' other comments about Alexander, they said he is not shy and goes right to work picking out daily jobs, some challenging. He is a good worker who follows through, concentrates a lot and is very detailed in his work. They said that he appears to be a second- or third-year student at the school. But I don't think that necessarily means he knows everything. They marked that he knows 14 upper-case letters but no lower-case letters, which I know isn't true because he can spell his name. But these things are only as good as the environment at the moment or as good as the day the child is having. He knows 9 of 11 colors (Apparently, he keeps insisting that black is brown and brown is black. I didn't realize this.).

They noted that Alexander gives them his best when he is not seated next to Anna! This is pretty typical among sibling groups, and there are several of them this year. Teachers now just make sure siblings sit apart from each other during morning circle time.

They did make a point of telling us that Alexander's feet face outward a bit when he walks and he sometimes seems to be tripping over himself! So, the director is going to get us a referral to a group of specialists, actually Children's Care Hospital, a different group in town from what I called a little over a month ago. (You may remember the pediatric ortho specialist I called said he would review our primary doctor's notes and then decide if he'd see Alex. Well, our doctor didn't think Alex had a problem.)

I'm glad the school has noticed this and can help us get whatever issue there may be taken care of. Of course, I pray it's minor enough and is easily correctable.

It's a little coincidental, though, that on Monday we took Alexander to get tested by the local public school system (now that he's 3) to make sure he's caught up and/or on track in all developmental areas and doesn't qualify for special assistance with a speech therapist, for example. In summing up Alexander, they used words like "phenomenal," which, by the way, though we know our son is awesome, we were a little perplexed by since he basically scored a "C" in one area.

Anyway, in the public school system's assessment of Alexander's motor skills, he scored in the 98th percentile! They measured his skills in tossing and catching, with one hand and two hands, etc., and also in jumping, hopping on one foot and skipping/galloping. I'd say their observation of him in this area took all of 15 minutes. Also, he scored in the 81st percentile in language skills and in the 73rd percentile in concepts. And he passed his vision and hearing screenings.

Enough with all this school testing talk! Time for bed.