Category: Uncategorized (Page 12 of 40)

Teacher Katherine participates in a Scholastic book program that lets us purchase discounted books and benefits her classroom (sign us up!). Jeff bought several and among them were slightly different levels of early readers. While D has been reading words in isolation, and he “reads” (picture reading and word reading) books sometimes alone at bedtime (is he reading or remembering the words?) , he’s yet to really own the process of reading words by himself.

Enter the Bob early reader series of books purchased as part of this program. Way to go Jeff; these have turned into a huge hit (partially because they are numbered, and D likes “unlocking” the next level–moving from book 1 to 2 for example. More on the great influence Lumosity soon!).

But also because…yes, he can read them!

Here he is reading his first entire book (book #1).

I just love the look on his face after he realizes what he just did. I didn’t say anything since I was recording, but believe me, after I stopped the video, we were all whooping it up.

He has since made it to book 5 in the series (with a little help).

I’m so proud of him, and so happy that the world of stories, knowledge, conformt and imagination is opening up to him. I can’t wait for him to get lost in a book.

Milestone #2: Kindergarten!

This summer, since I wasn’t working as much, we had time to prepare for the coming school year, and actually were able to get all the school supplies gathered without stress or fuss. Sharpie markers? Check. Colored pencils? Got ’em covered. First-day assignment to make Poster All About Me? Done.

Here is D all dressed up for his first day of Kindergarten with Teacher Katherine (he chose which tie to wear).

Kindergarten is truly magical thanks for the highly talented Teacher Katherine.

For example, take a look at the “book club”  bags she made for each child:

(in the Book Club each child will read one of the Elephant & Piggie books; then in October, they’re taking a field trip to see a play based on these much loved characters.)

Katherine is also the head of early childhood development at Gardner and her experience really shows. She presented us with a very thorough orientation and the curriculum is challenging but still tailored to the needs of each child.

Check out their schedule!

And here is an email from Katherine, which will give you a sense of the level she is working at!:

Hello Kalama Folk,

Today was our first Monday of this school year! Our class is running smoothly on the right track with routines, activities, and following the schedule.

Last week we began Writers’ Workshop.  Each day we do a mini-lesson on some aspect of the writing process. Then the kidlets take their writing folders and find a writing spot. So far we have covered a variety of ideas. Our focus is writing to teach others about things that you know well. We discussed the idea that “When you are done, you have only just begun!”–meaning when you finish one piece of work and have added all of the details you can think of, you go to the paper shelves and choose the page for your next story. They were asked to write slowly and/or sing their words to help themselves hear each sound. Today, we talked about how writing takes courage and perseverance. On our second day, when Writers’ Workshop was announced, one of the kids said, “Oh good. I love Writers’ Workshop!” My goal for the class is to have the kids working diligently and independently for 20 minutes at a time  by the middle of the year. The class is well on its way. Once the kids settle into their writing routines, I will have time to do writing conferences with individual students.

In math, we have been practicing patterns, counting by ones, recognizing shapes and becoming introduced to the manipulatives that will be used in math through out the year. Sometimes, math is done with the whole class and sometimes with half groups.

This year, Claire will be teaching science twice a week.  Last week the class harvested kale and tomatoes and then helped prepare it too be cooked.  Claire cooked it and then everyone had a chance to sample it during lunch. Not everyone chose to try it.

In reading, we have been learning about reading to yourself. While many kids read stories at home, it can be challenging to find a book, walk quietly to a spot without other friends nearby, and read.  We talk about stamina and how you need to build stamina mentally in the classroom, just like athletes need to build stamina when training.  The goal for reading is to be able to read independently and quietly for 20 minutes as well.  Once the kids are able to read for extended periods of time, I will be conducting reading groups.

We also began FAST–a multisensory phonemic training program.  I introduced the kids to the language used and the routines involved in the earliest stages of the FAST program. Watching the kids manipulate sounds helps me to have a better understanding of each person’s phonemic awareness.  Most of the kids will be doing either Phonographics (another phonemic awareness program with less sounds to manipulate than FAST), or FAST in the coming months.

Last Friday, we began our Elephant and Piggie reading club.  Kids get to bring home a book and keep it there until they feel done and then exchange the book for another one. Each kidlet has a laminated page showing all of the book covers and titles.  Your child will put a dot on a book when taking it home. When the book is returned, the dot will be turned into a check.  When all of the books have been read, your child will get to take a picture with Elephant and Piggie.  We have Gerald (the elephant) and Piggie stuffed animals in the classroom.  Each day, they hide in new places and the kids try to find them, similar to “Olivia” at the Vancouver Trader Joes.

The kids have gone to Spanish, Art, Music, PE, and Science.

Today the students met their Tahoma (7th/8th grade) buddies and played a game with them in the wetlands.

This week we will introduce the multiple intelligences and do some activities to experience learning through different “smarts.” We will continue solidifying routines, becoming more familiar with the schedule and continue working on reading, writing, math.

Don’t forget that next week begins the PTO sponsored Scholastic Book Fair, It will be set up in the Great Room during the week of September 21-25! This is a great opportunity to buy books and support the PTO!

Have a great week! Thank you for sharing your kids with me.  We are having a wonderful time.

What a week huh? Tired? I know, me too. But D is totally energized by it  and I must say, any doubts I’ve had about Gardner in the past have evaporated!

I do hope some G’Mas and G’Pas could think about being in town with use mid-December when the kids will be putting on a special play for their Culminating Event…think about it! It promises to be very memorable.

It seems incredible that it was only last fall that D started riding an actual kid bike with training wheels, having graduated from his balance bike. Remember that first day on the new bike, riding through Laurelhurst Park in Portland as part of Sunday Parkways?  (Here is the blog post).

Well about a  six weeks ago, the training wheels came off. He decided it was time; he was perhaps inspired by the idea of purchasing a gleaming new 20″ bike he’d seen with Daddy at Camas Bike and Sport: you can’t put training wheels on a big boy 20″ bike.

The amazing bit was he just got on an rode his 2 wheeled bike, without training wheels, without help, effortlessly.

Here he is back on August 9 riding his bike for the very first time.

Don’t you love how he put on his knee pads and wrist guards? I think having the gear is a large motivator…you know how he likes his “styles.”

And here he is a mere week later, riding on a real bike path, down the middle of the highway no less!

Here are some snaps from the group birthday party held last week at Gardner…

The birthday party featured a visit from the Reptile Man, who D has seen a few times at Goddard School. Still it is always exciting to see a man pluck a full-grown boa constrictor from a cage before your very eyes…not to mention having its slithery body draped around your neck (D always volunteers for this!).

We also hired a team of face painters, who were quite in demand; D waited patiently in line to get his face transformed into a beautiful Sly Mr. Fox. I think this is was the highlight of the party for us!

We talk about foxes a lot; we have an elaborate story we sometimes tell at bedtime about “Brother Fox” (name borrowed from the same character in the Isabelle Dalhousie series of books by Alexander McCall Smith), who, though very elusive, can sometimes be spotted snatching produce from the garden in the wee hours of the morning.  In fact we planted crops in the garden this year expressly for his consumption. He is a deep red color, with a white-tipped tail. We catch glimpses of him when we leave for the airport at a very early hour, say, for a 6am flight. What a thrill to see him dive into the hedges, carrot leaves in his wake!

Lately D has been picking up my point-and-shoot camera and snapping away. At first, he wanted to record all the (important?) things in our house, in case a thief stole them (!!).

But after that wore off, he started simply documenting his world.

He is making an “All About Me” poster to bring into the first day of Kindergarten. He decided that since he is a photographer now, he should include that fact. We’ve gotten some prints made for him to glue-stick onto the board. It may be hard to narrow it down to 2 or 3 shots…

I think his eye is pretty interesting. Assembled together, these shots tell a story!

August 5 was D’s golden birthday!

Because it’s such a big birthday, we’ll be celebrating all month. His birthday party, a group affair (5 August birthdays), comes at the tail of the month, to be held on school grounds.

In the meantime, we have received some very special gifts, and experienced 2 major milestones…more on those later.

Since we spotted a ride-on scooter at Toys R Us in May, Dashiell had begged for it to be his birthday present, even offering to save his allowance money to support the expense (we have just started to pay him an allowance for doing his chores. One of his chores is making his bed, which he does by kneeling at the head of the bed, in bed,  and straightening the bedclothes. It is pretty funny to see!).

We knew the scooter was too small for him and might not get used for very long, but still, the thought of him zooming around on the stylish Vespa-like machine, albeit with training wheels, was too much to  resist,

There was a lot of buildup and anticipation around the arrival of the scooter: was in it in our (virtual) shopping cart, how and when it was being ordered, what kind of box it would arrive in, whether it would arrive via UPS or FedEx, etc. When the day finally came, we made sure it was charged and ready, and Jeff put a ribbon on it. D came downstairs, still sleepy from a nap, and feigned surprise when he saw it…still, I think he does enjoy riding it. Or will for the next two weeks; I imagine by the end of the summer we’ll be giving it to another boy.

Here he is, riding it for the first time:

With that thrill over, we then received a birthday gift that far eclipsed the scooter…all the way from Germany, too. “Schwester” (sister) Lisa sent an outstanding soccer shirt from the local Stuttgart team, personalized with his name, and bearing his age as his player number. Really, it was the best gift he could have received. Thank you schwester Lisa!

He’ll only be wearing this nice clean white shirt to indoor soccer (here is D above with school friend Stelios at indoor soccer).

Continuing on the soccer theme, many thanks to G’Ma Beverly for the Playskool soccer figures. These keep D busy for great lengths of time; he really enjoys naming the different nationalities of the players, changing their jersey numbers, and pitting them against each other for matches.

For me, the best gifts were all the books we received from D’s Amazon Wish List. Thanks to G’Ma Lori, G’Pa Don and Aunt Amanda for the really nice Phaidon editions of books by our new favorite author Tomi Ungerer. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have new material to read at bedtime!

In this same vein, D also received the original Paddington chapter books by way of a Amazon gift card from Uncle Chris (thank you!). Every night, Jef reads from the “grown up” books and D listens intently; we are practicing forming pictures in our mind from the words we hear.  I often translate the UK English words to American English and we stop and review scenes in which the language is a bit confusing. But still, he listens. We all enjoy hearing these hilarious and gentle books read aloud.

Another excellent gift came from Shelli (wrapped beautifully, with a crafty hand-made card as well), the game of Zingo, which is a bingo-like game for early readers. The designers of this game were very smart; they gave the child something to move and click — the bingo tiles get “dealt” via a clever slider. This alone keeps D interested, but he also likes identifying the words using the pictures (house, bird, worm, etc.). Like the serious Bingo players, we quickly graduated to playing with more than 1 card each. He loves the competition! Before you know it we’ll be headed down to the Moose Lodge for Bingo nights…he does have a lucky streak (remember when he won that free turkey at the firefighter’s ball?)

Thanks to all for the cards and gifts. It was (and continues!) to be an extra special birthday.

Sometimes at bedtime, we read old “baby” books that I’ve kept around to use as beginning readers (this is going well). One of these is My World, by Margaret Wise Brown. One of the pages shows the hero little bunny putting himself to sleep in his bed alone, with the caption, “I go to sleep when my story has been read, when my prayers are said, and when my head is sleepy on the pillow.”

This led to a discussion of what a prayer is; I told D is it a hope for someone you love. This doesn’t quite register yet, but he does like to make sure he says his prayers (if only as a delaying tactic).

We have been sleep-challenged this summer, at first due to losing two teeth in rapid succession, and now I think due to missing sleeping with us in the same room when we were in Las Vegas, or perhaps simply the summer light.

Often in the wee hours, D will appear in our room, and stand next to my head. I almost always know he’s there and I usually wake up and send him back to his bed, but lately I have been less disciplined about this (partly due to not being able to get up easily once asleep, as I am still recovering from the Great Golf Concussion of July 4th). So sometimes he will arrive in the pre-Midnight hours, complaining of aching legs, and sometimes later, near dawn, due to loneliness. It was during one of the Midnight sojourns that he discovered the sound of crickets, coming through the open window. It was a magical moment for him, and me, to lie there in the moonlight, listening to the tiny symphony.

5 years old and never heard a cricket, you say? How can this be? This is a sound he has never had the chance to hear, since we have to run the sound machine or air conditioner and close all the windows to (try to) keep him asleep. And our best intentions to get out camping with him have been, well…only intentions (where has the summer gone? …oh yeah, I started a business, got sick twice, got conked in the noggin, and remember those teeth? It was like having a 3-month old again!).

Recently I had a visit from him close to dawn, a silent time in our neighborhood. There was no breeze through the open window, and all was still. As we lie there in the twilight trying to get back to sleep, D said gently:

The crickets must have gone home for dinner.

Tonight we’ll be saying a prayer for all the living creatures in our world–the spider we transported back outside; the moles in the yard, our friends and family members…but we will say a special prayer for Uncle Eric, who is soldiering on on the hospital.

I’d been thinking about writing this blog post about prayers a couple weeks back when I remembered a great spiritual jazz tune that I listened to in labor called This Prayer, for the Whole World by Build an Ark. Strangely, I heard it on the local jazz radio station soon after…here it is.

Sometimes, for variety, we’ll revisit books we haven’t read in awhile at bedtime. During this heat wave we’ve been turning to wintery books, like the lushly illustrated version of Robert Frost’s poem, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening given to us by “Grandma” Cheryl (of Kansas City, thank you!).

The “Snowmen” series have always been a delight, full of the wonder and magic that come to mind when normal life is transformed and hushed by a blanket of fresh snow. Snowmen All Year is our favorite, but one night last week we chose Snowmen At Work, which describes how snowmen have jobs, too, like dentists, story time librarians, and sled repair technicians, not to mention that all important winter job of snow shoveler.

So I was rather surprised to have this exchange with D upon starting Snowman At Work a couple nights back.

“But that wouldn’t really happen, right?”
“Snowmen shoveling?”
“Because they’re just snow.”
“Are they? So they can’t have jobs, and go to work?”
“No.”
“What if they were made out of magic snow?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
With a shrug of his shoulders, he explained. “That’s just life.”

From Teachers Betsy, Norma (Spanish teacher), and Peter (PE):

It was a Friday so there were just eight kids sitting around the snack table. Dashiell, who loves to add funny rhymes like “tricky mickey” to our daily routines started a rhyming game. He would call out two words, such as “book and nook”. Then another child would call out “ look and cook.” The rhymes would go back and forth until they couldn’t come up with another set of words and then the students would start over. The game was completely child initiated and lead. There were smiles and laughter all around the table. Each child was kind and respectful even if another child was still trying to learn rhyming.

This is a wonderful example of how Dashiell can be a leader amongst his peers and bring his sense of fun, humor and knowledge to our classroom on a daily basis. Dashiell is enthusiastic about all aspects of school. He enjoys learning, exploring and wondering. He easily follows class routines and loves being outside and moving.

Dashiell loves being with his peers and can play and work cooperatively with anyone in the classroom.

Dashiell has made tremendous progress throughout the entire year in all areas.

Dashiell can easily identify all of his uppercase and lowercase letters. He can confidently identify all letter sounds and several initial blends such as “sh” and “th.”

Dashiell loves books and reading. He is always ready to listen to a story as well as share about stories he has read. It is exciting to see him start to read on his own. He has a strong understanding that letters work together to create words. When reading with Dashiell he can easily decode most constant-vowel-consonant words and recall them the next time he encounters them in the story. He has begun to remember several sight words, such as “the”, “and”, “a” and “on.”

Dashiell has worked very hard over the past year to strengthen his fine motor skills. In the beginning of the year Dashiell was working on letter formation and a fluid stroke of his first name. By the end of the year he was writing his first, middle and last name with increased uniformity of size and great control of letter formation. Dashiell is still working on increasing stamina, strength and slowing down. Fun fine motor activities, such as drawing in modeling clay with a golf tee, would be great to help maintain and continue develop the progress he has made over the year.

Dashiell enjoys counting and exploring his awareness of early numeracy in the world around him. Dashiell loves to count. He can easily count objects up to 100 using correct one to one correspondence. One to one correspondence is the ability to accurately touch and count objects simultaneously.

In addition, Dashiell can easily create and extend simple AB patterns as well as more complex patterns such as ABB. (pictured)

Spanish

I am overjoyed at the fact that the students have become so comfortable using Spanish throughout the school day. From the moment they arrive, the students now are confident in their Spanish abilities and have grown accustomed to integrating it into their own life by choice. For example, during snack time I used to point out certain foods and have the class repeat it. Now, they shout out the food they have brought and raise it high into the air as their faces light up because they have correctly identified their snack in Spanish. With this second language becoming more familiar, it was exciting to integrate “La Oruga Hambrienta” since the students were catching on so quickly. Using words and pictures, the students were able to visualize this foreign concept that at first they might have not been able to grasp. It was thrilling as well as impressive to see the enjoyment and full participation of every single student during this play. It has been a pleasure working with these students, as a class and one on one. Thank you for an amazing year!

P.E.
Dashiell is agile, speedy, and has strong stamina. He is eager to play and loves to chase and run. He sometimes shys away from taking risks but when he is comfortable he will engage 100%. I look forward to working with him next year.

Mom’s note: Betsy doesn’t mention here that D is also counting in 2s, 5s and 10s, up to 100!