School Stuff

I have probably declared my love for Wyatt and Reese's school about a million times on here, but I'll say it again, we just love it.  We had such a difficult time making the decision about sending Wyatt to Kindergarten there, and we finally settled on it because even though it's expensive, the curriculum is just that good. 

 

Reese knows all her letters, she knows what sounds they make, and she was able to get her Phonics book at school last year.  Once she got her Phonics book, she started working on it at the rate of a page or two a day.  She finally finished it this week, and she got her very own reader on Wednesday!

 

 This little girl is so me.  She read the first 12 pages at school on Wednesday, and she basically hasn't put it down since she got home.  She took it to her room for quiet time, and she read about three quarters of it on her own.  She didn't even ask me for help...she asked Wyatt.  And he helped her.

 I was just like this as a child.  I sped through reading.  When I got to second grade I was ahead of the kids in my class, and they sent me back to my first grade class to teach the younger kids to read.  And that was just the beginning.  I was basically Rory Gilmore.  I carried a book with me everywhere.  I became so ridiculously obsessed with The Baby-Sitters Club that I read all the time.  Even in school.  I got caught with a book hidden inside my math book in the third grade.  That is probably going to be my girl!

 

Wyatt loves to get new readers. He got his tenth reader last week, and he got the eleventh this week!

He likes to read, but I wouldn't say he loves it.  I think he's discovering that it's exciting, and that it's helping him discover the world.  He's sounding out words now, and he's able to figure more things out.  Signs, things we spell, his shirts (ha)!  I think that reading is really starting to hit him in a "big picture" kind of way, and that's exciting!

 

And the things he comes home with just amaze me.  He's able to look at pictures now and write what he sees.  Simple things like "rug," "cap," etc., but when it's coupled with the (drastic) change I'm seeing in his handwriting, it makes me a proud mom!

 

He can do simple addition and subtraction, fractions, and now he's counting by even numbers.  It is just crazy to me that this little boy is learning so much.  And the idea that he's going to be at school five days a week for the entire day next year?  Just crazy!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Wyatt will be in first grade next year, so he'll be leaving the school, but we just signed Reese and Hudson up for school next year.  I can't believe that Hudson is going to school!  Reese will be in Pre-K next year, which is basically just giving us one more year before she starts Kindergarten.  Her birthday is in late August, so she meets the cut off for Kindergarten next year, but we decided to keep her in preschool for one more year.  She only misses the cut off by a month, so for now we've decided to "redshirt" her. (The linked article provided good info on redshirting, and also links to an interesting 60 minutes segment).  At the end of the year we'll talk to her teacher and make sure that we're making the right decision for her, but for now we think Pre-K is the way to go.

 

Hudson will be in three year old class two days a week next year, which is just crazy!  He'll be two when he starts, but he will have to go to a year of Pre-K anyway because he's a November baby.  I just can not believe that he's now big enough to be signed up for school!  Is he going to be as big as Wyatt was when he started in September?!  Crazy!