He’s reading at almost 3rd grade level and is doing great on all subjects.

Mrs. Amato wrote:
Three things you are doing a great job on:
1. Ethan is reading well above grade level. He reads fluently and with expression.
2. Ethan is also doing wonderfully at math and understanding the concepts being taught.
3. Writer’s Workshop is another area in which Ethan does well. He has a wonderful imagination.

Three things to keep working on:
1. Doing our work slowly and neatly! Remembering to take our time.

***

Ethan’s emotional maturity is also an area that needs to grow. He sometimes gets frustrated and cries, usually about things beyond his control. (There was the time Glen forgot to give him his backpack when he dropped him off and Ethan thought he’d lost it, and that he didn’t have lunch and that it was a disaster. I heard from our friend Ruth Hollis that Mrs. Amato was so warm and reassuring and helped him get past it.)

He needs to do his work a little more slowly because his fine motor skills can’t keep up with the ideas his brain is spitting out, so his work is frequently barely legible.

We talked about Ethan skipping a grade or him being in gifted and talented. But San Mateo-Foster City doesn’t have a great program for G&T. Their “GATE” program doesn’t start until 4th grade. Glen and I would rather keep him at the grade level he’s at now, but get him in a gifted and talented program. Finishing school a year earlier doesn’t get you into Harvard.

Most gratifying, Mrs. Amato said how much she really enjoys Ethan. She said she remembered him from the Book Buddy program last year, and how they could have long conversations together. She also said that we are doing a good job as parents enriching the education with things like that airplane ride. (Thank you Grandma Penny!)

We know she will keep him challenged this year, in his first/second grade split, and that she is a perfect teacher to help him with his frustrations an high emotions.

Last night he read Dav Pilkey’s The Adventures of Captain Underpants, 121 pages in less than 90 minutes.