First Grade Update

This is little man's 2011-2012 school picture. He dressed himself and styled his own hair. Yes, this t-shirt and jeans kid wore a shirt and tie and a faux-hawk!

We had parent teacher conferences this week. This is when you want to walk in and ask the teacher, "is my kid worst the kid in the class?" Of course you can't compare children and any good teacher would only give the appropriate indirect and politically correct answer so that you really don't know if he or she is smarter than Brandon or worse behaved than Sarah. In the end though really we just want to know if there is anything we could or should be doing to help our own kid succeed. Nate is having a good year. He likes his teacher who is extremely organized and runs a tight ship. No worries, she's nice and manages to smile a bit too! We sat down with her for our 15 minutes of glory complete with a timer and the following family given instructions to knock at the door at their start time. Nate got what we call a "good" report. He's pretty much your average Joe and we embrace that and are proud! He's catching on to the reading thing at lightning speed. He got his father's math gene. He occasionally reverses his numbers and chronically reverses b and d. He's not a spelling bee champion as evidenced by his writing sample below. He's "friendly and witty," a quote from his teacher. However. Yep. The "however." He struggles with sitting still, socializing and blurting. Hhmmm. Imagine. My child has energy, talks and knows all the answers! So, we're focusing on some tactics to help him keep his bottom in his chair, his ears tuned in to the teacher and his lips glued together! This is an example of a recent writing sample. To get the full effect of his phonetic and sometimes not-so-phonetic spelling that kills me you might want to zoom in a little. He was asked to write about Thanksgiving. I will translate the above: "I go to my grandma's house in Napoleon. My dad has four turkeys. It takes five hours to get to grandma's house. My cousins come their names are Zack and Molly and Kendall. I like the mashed potatoes." This narrative is followed by a picture of our green mini van. The little orange-y things in it are "our family." The brown thing is the turkey. I can't say we've ever taken 5 hours to get to Napoleon with a turkey strapped to our roof, but great work on the details, Nate! And, for the record, the mashed the potatoes are great!