Catching Up

So much to catch up on. Between my school classes (which I am absolutely loving, BTW!), home projects, sicknesses, and life, I've fallen a bit behind with my news. I never even got around to posting Valentine's photos.

Here are some cute pics of the kids playing out in the snow after school. Taken early last week, I think. By the end of the week we were up to at least the mid 60s and all snow had melted. But now today, Tuesday, everything is white again and we're back down to -2 degrees, according to the newspaper's Web site. I'm sure this roller-coaster pattern will continue through at least the end of April. It was early May last year when we got one of our blizzards.

Yesterday morning we had our spring parent-teacher conferences. We got great reports on both children, both above average for their age in their achievements. Anna apparently had a terrible day at school after that, wouldn't you know it. She was pretty defiant. I think it might have been because she's feeling under the weather. I kept her home from school Friday with a fever and cough and we didn't go out all weekend. She seemed better yesterday so we let her go to school, but that was a mistake. I've kept her home today (and Alexander, too, just so I wouldn't have to get out with her in this extreme cold and snowy weather to pick him up from school).

Back to their school reports, Anna shows "advanced skills in language and knows all the phonetic sounds, with the e, i, u sounds sometimes her only challenge." (Sometimes she'll mix up the "e" and "i" sounds, which I think is not at all uncommon, even for big people.) Apparently, there was one color pattern sequence she got mixed up on, during their evalutions. It seems she understands the concept of counting and could count beyond 30 and knew the next set of tens were the 40s and the next after that were the 50s, etc. Also, despite her defiance at school yesterday, they said she "shows great improvement in conflict resolution." Also, "she continues to work toward independence with tying, buttoning, and zipping, as well as cutting for accuracy." We talked about beginning reading with her, and the teacher recommended a set of graduated starter books we could purchase. Actually, Anna can already read. It's so amazing the accuracy with which she read books back to me after I've first read them to her. Sometimes word for word. I know that a lot of that is sheer memory of the story, prompted by the pictures that remind her of what is said on that particular page. So to test her and challenge her, lately I've been stopping along in the story and asking her to point out certain words to me on the page. And she can do it! Sometimes she can point to the correct word right away. Sometimes you can see that she's trying to sound them out by first looking for the word with the correct first letter sound (thus, she might pick the wrong "f" word on the page, for example). And these aren't even these beginning "starter books," which are very short and don't have much of a story line, or even illustrations, but more repeated words.

For Alexander, he is "in no way 'Anna's little brother'. He continues to challenge himself with a variety of work, especially those practical life activities that need intense concentration and coordination. It's interesting that his fine motor abilities, when applied to readiness skills, translates into very precise, detailed work." I've have been noticing his fine motor skills for a long time now. When we had his gross and fine motor skills tested back in the fall at this special children's hospital here (we went really for his outtoeing), they also determined his fine motor skills were well above average for his age. They also remarked about his basketball playing, believe it or not! During their outdoor playtime at the end of the day, he's so determined in this activity and keeps trying and trying and apparently often makes the goal (a standard-height goal). They say he recognizes 17 lower case letters and 21 upper case letters, knows 13 phonetic sounds, knows 11 of 11 colors, can recognize the difference between an ellipse and oval. Until yesterday, I didn't know what an ellipse was, sorry to say! As for the color/shape pattern, he correctly reproduced a square shape for the teacher but missed a color (or two, I don't know) within that square.