Tyler's School Progress!

Yesterday, Tyler received his progress report for his first nine weeks of kindergarten.  I have been checking in with his teacher every once in a while to make sure he was doing well.  And, he gets behavioral reports each day, so I had a good idea of how he was doing.  Sure enough, his report indicated that he was a "pleasure in her class" and "was adjusting very well to the classroom!"  Because it is early, the report only covers behavioral aspects and not academic.  Next progress report, we should see a report discussing both areas.  We are so proud of Tyler!  He has really done a great job adjusting to the school, and we know that his preparation from preschool contributes so much to his readiness.

Tyler is learning so much at school already.  They have a story wall which helps them learn to develop sentences and read words.  I'm not really sure how it works, but from what I can understand from Tyler, the theme of the wall changes each week.  For example, this week is about family.  When Tyler tells me about it, he uses his finger to point in the air where the words are in the sentence as if he is reading it off of the wall.  "An aunt is part of a family."  The other day, he brought me a book and showed me the word "see" and told me what the word was.  He is definitely learning to recognize words!

They are also working a lot on writing skills.  They work on not only writing the alphabet (which he knows from preschool), but making sure they are writing the letter correctly and in the right order.  They have clever rhymes and poems for the letters and the numbers.  My favorite is the poem for the number five.  Imagine writing the number five while reading this:  a skinny man got fat and put on a hat!  :) 

Reading comphrension is also another area they are working on.  Tyler has a reading folder as well as a homework folder.  Every night he is supposed to read a book (or have me read it for now).  On Thursday nights, we read a book and then he writes about his favorite part of the book.  Last week, we read Where the Wild Things Are.  His favorite part of the book was when the trees grew in the bedroom, so he wrote that on the paper.  Each night of the week (minus Friday), he has homework that right now is pretty easy for him.  But it is helping him to write much better.  He must write his name and the full date on the top of every homework sheet. 

Tyler enjoys his "specials" at school which are library, music, and computers.  They sing songs in music, learn to type their name and numbers in computer, and get to read and check out books at the library.  He recently checked out a book and came home with it.  I'm not sure he knew what the book was about because it was about contractions!  So, we had a little grammar lesson, and I giggled that he is definitely part of our gramatically-obsessed family! 

Tyler is continuing to enjoy the after school program.  It has worked out that he only has to go five times in a month, and the other times Josh gets him.  Josh helps him do his homework when he gets home, so often I never get to help him.  But the weeks Josh is on day shift, I do that while feeding Ryan. 

 We look forward to watching Tyler learn more and more!