On Thursday, George and I were invited to attend Hayley’s Kindergarten classroom any time between 5:30 and 8:30. The school was having an open house of sorts, what they called “student-led conferences”. Basically it entailed having the kids invite their family to come and see their classroom, check out some of their work, and get a bit of a view of what they do in class on a daily basis.

Hayley showed us around, showing us where she sits, pointed out her artwork around the room, showed us the journal they write in every Monday, and so on. The journal was fascinating to me to look at. Every Monday they choose one activity that they did over the weekend and they would draw a picture of it. At the beginning of the school year, Hayley would draw the picture and her teacher would write out the sentence below it, saying what she had done. Now, though, Hayley does the picture AND writes the sentence. It’s just amazing to me to see her progress in writing!

She also took us on a tour to show us where their “borrowing books” are that they can bring home, the computer they use for educational games (how awesome is it to live in a time where they have a computer in the Kindergarten class?!), the different play areas, and she showed us all her favorite toys to play with.

Breanna enjoyed herself too. We couldn’t get anyone to babysit so we just brought her with us and she wasn’t quite as disruptive as I had anticipated (although she did get paint on a wall by accident, yay for washable paint!), mostly because in stereotypical Breanna fashion, she made a beeline for the play kitchen and spent most of her time pulling out cups and bowls and food and doing what she frequently does at home.

Hayley really enjoyed showing Breanna around too, telling her all the things she’ll be doing when she starts school. She gave Breanna a spot on the circle to sit, and gave her a book. That lasted for a few seconds longer than it took for me to take this shot and then she was back at the kitchen.

After our tour we had a chance to just chat a little with her teacher. She told us that as long as Hayley puts effort into her work, she’s very capable of doing everything well, just that sometimes she gets distracted by the other kids. It seems, from what she said and what I heard her saying to other parents, as though it’s pretty common in the class, that they all get distracted some days. I guess it’s their age. She also told us that one thing she works hard on is to teach the kids to be kind to each other and mixes the small groups up a lot so that everyone has to learn to play with each other and that Hayley is not a kid to say mean things to the others. That’s so nice to hear, that she’s nice to everyone, even the kids she’s not crazy about. What a relief to know she’s not being hurtful!

The best thing the teacher told us though was about Hayley’s reading. George and I were already very proud of her with her reading. Ever since she started reading on her own, she is much more interested in trying to read something herself than letting us read it to her. She needs help with some words, but generally she’s doing very well. What I didn’t know is that she’s reading beyond her age group. The teacher told us that Hayley has moved on to reading grade one level books. In fact, she said that she won’t even give Hayley Kindergarten books to bring home anymore, and that when they practice reading on the whiteboard in the morning, she challenges Hayley with words that are not Kindergarten level.

Considering the fact that George and I are both bookworms, that was one of the best things we could have heard. I really hope that she always enjoys reading this much.

Friday was a ped day, so on our way out of the school we bought some treats from a bake sale that was being held in the front hall of the building for a snack and we let them stay up a bit later than normal bedtime just so they could unwind from all the excitement.

I’ve been confused ever since. I’m so sure today is Sunday when it’s actually only Saturday. I’m sure I’ll enjoy that when I go to bed tonight and realize I don’t need to set my alarm for 6:30 am. We don’t have any major plans for today. Yesterday we had some errands to run and we stopped at Toys R Us because we had two gift cards from the kids’ birthdays that we still hadn’t used. Breanna – see above about her kitchen obsession – picked out her own toys as soon as we passed through the play kitchen area of the store, and came home with a frying pan, a bunch of mixing bowls, utensils, and some more toy food. She just seriously loves those things. Meanwhile, Hayley got herself a computer game, but her biggest excitement came from the toy I had in mind when we walked in. She’s been obsessed with Mariposa ever since her aunt bought her the DVD, and I knew they had some Mariposa Barbies on sale. She came home with a very beautiful Mariposa doll and she loves it. She hasn’t moved an inch without that doll since we came home yesterday.

And on that note, I think I’ll clean up the living room a bit and maybe re-organize some of the toys so it doesn’t look like an exploded toy store in here, and then I think we’ll go for a walk since the weather is pretty decent today. Enjoy your weekend!