At Laurel Elementary School they use the NOYCE reading and writing program for strong literacy skills (http://www.noycefdn.org/literacy/index.html). The kids have to write stories and draw corresponding pictures every day. Spelling doesn’t count yet, but they are using punctuation.

Mrs. Amato asked the class to write about something that made them sad. Ethan wrote about moving away from his best friend Nicolas when he was 4. At the end of class he asked Mrs. Amato to keep the story for him because it made him to sad to think about it.

Aw!!!

When Matthew is excited (in a happy way) he runs in place, pounding his feet on the floor and wringing his hands.

Yesterday he had the most exciting time of his life. In his gymnastics class they pulled out the giant parachute. He was THRILLED! For once he did everything the teachers said. He was so excited and happy – I wish I was a writer and could describe the look on his face and the motion of his body. He was hurling himself through space, jumping with every ounce of his being and squealing with gasping laughter.

One of the other mothers said to me, it’s too bad Matthew is such a sad child.

Ethan is excelling in 1st grade with Mrs. Amato. Mrs. Amato is also a fantastic teacher. I am so blessed with these teachers!!! She has 3 boys herself, just about the ages of our 3. I love her approach to teaching the whole child. She’s warm and friendly and has 20 years experience teaching this grade level. Her philosophies are very similar to mine. She emphasizes family time at home over busy-work homework. She let me know this past week that she is assessing the children’s reading level and Ethan has now shown that he has surpassed the reading level for the end of 1st grade and is beginning to test out of early 2nd grade reading.

Because of the way she runs her 1st/2nd grade split class, he is also learning division! Every day they come up with equations to reach the number of the day, which increases by 1 each day. Ethan likes to do equations with multiple functions and numbers (like (100 / 2) – 40 + 3 = 13) and she has told him he is doing ALGEBRA. But one of his 1sr grade classmates is a math whiz and, being exposed to his more advanced multiplication and division solutions, the children have begun to understand the patterns of this 3rd and 4th grade math.

Ethan is in class with other “independent workers,” kids who can progress without a lot of hand-holding. Half of the 10 1st graders were in Ethan’s highly competitive kindergarten. It wasn’t the parents and teacher who made the class competitive… it was the students! They had a race to see who would read the most books! They challenged each other to see who could figure out harder math problems! (Jason wrote a note to Sophia K: Do you know what 7 * 14 is? DO YOU?) I love that they were inspiring each other to do their best. It also seemed to be a healthy, supportive competition to me, although I didn’t have much of a vantage.

One thing we’ve been working on with Ethan is his upper body strength, which we hope will improve his fine motor skills as well. We decided that every day we would get to school early enough that he could cross the monkey bars at the playground. At first it was tough for him. A month later he can go across and back again.

He gets up an hour and a half before school so he has time to wake up, get hungry enough to eat a good breakfast with protein, and walk to school with his dad and brothers.

The transition to all-day school has been tough on Ethan. 4 days a week extend until 2:40, Wednesdays are a minimum day letting out at 12:20. He says he misses me and he doesn’t get to spend enough time with me. But he’s slowly getting into the swing of things schedule-wise.

Jared is reading. Yep. 4 years old and he’s sounding out words more easily than Ethan did a year ago. I can only guess that when he was learning his letter symbols over the last year and a half, he was also hearing Ethan learn the sounds they make and the phonics process. I am amazed at how well this is going for him. I didn’t push him at all; he just started showing an interest!

He does really well at school. Teacher Leslie, whom I think is a great teacher, has expressed high praise for two things he has done already this year. One day he helped her count “jewels” they were using to decorate sand castles at school – she was very impressed that he counted all of them – 91. On another day she was very impressed with his fine motor skills as she watched him open and close the safety pin on his name tag.

Jared is very capable of sitting quietly during group time and soaking it all in. He participates beautifully.

Teacher Nancy, last year, called him a little scientist with those acute observing skills. Perhaps I have already blogged that. Next week, he starts pre-k. Ethan never had pre-k – he just had play-based all the way until kindergarten. But Ethan also had more hours of school per week, and this pre-k gives Jared an extra 3 hours per week. I know Jared will enjoy the extra curriculum.

Will Matthew start reading when he’s 3?

The 2 year old answers questions.

Since he turned 2 until yesterday:
What’s your name?
3!
Matthew, what’s your _name_?
3!
Matthew, how old are you?
3!
No Matthew, you’re 2. How old are you?
4! 4 and a half! 6!

Since yesterday:
What’s your name?
Mathoooo!
Hooray! How old are you?
Mathoooo!
Yes, that’s your name. But how old are you?
Mathoooo!