First Grade

Haley has now completed three weeks of FIRST grade! We thought about requesting this move ourselves at the beginning of the school year and then again at the end of the first quarter but decided to wait and see before pushing for any more acceleration that she was already getting (through reading and math class with first grade and AIG services once a week). Just as Haley's tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy recovery was almost over, the principal asked if we were interested in moving her on up to first grade. We thought about it hard, worrying mostly about her relationships with her amazingly sweet and positive teacher in kindergarten and her friends. We decided to make the move because, although we LOVE her kindergarten teacher, she hadn't really learned anything new all year and was developing more and more habits of just doing enough to get by.

Within one week of first grade her writing improved tremendously, she flew through over half of the 100 words to spell by the end of first grade (she could already read all of them on the first day-and I'm sure long before that if she had been tested), and continued to flourish in math and all other areas. We've had to work on her handwriting, correctly forming the letters just so on the lines. Her new teacher is quite a stickler for that.

Now, at the end of the third week she has only a small handful of the 100 words left to master the spelling of. She is adding and subtracting double-digit numbers, her writing is continuing to improve, and her reading ability continues to increase rapidly. (Although we have requested repeatedly that her reading level (DRA) be updated, we have met resistance to the timely meeting of our request. Hopefully in a couple of weeks this will be done. She is still labeled as being at a 10 but I know that she is at least at a 28 and probably higher than this). This weekend she read part of an article from a fourth grade National Geographic Discoverer with great comprehension. She is absolutely amazing!!!

I am looking forward to seeing what she is doing at the end of the year and then again at the end of the summer just before she enters second grade!!! :)

PS: She has been doing multiplication for a few months now using the skip counting strategy.

First Dance Competition

Haley had her very first dance competition this weekend. She and the other four little ones in her group did GREAT! They were eating up the audience's cheers and claps! They performed a mixed song with the Little Red Riding Hood theme. It is amazing to see what their teachers can get out of them. They are 4, 5, 5, 6, and 6. They scored a platinum and won first place overall in their category. On top of it all, Haley spent quality time developing relationships with the other kids in her group and the "big kids" from Fancy Feet who give her lots of sweet attention and have really taken her under their wings. We are so proud to be a part of such a compassionate dance studio family!

We are really looking forward to next weekend when Haley performs to a line production of "Never Never Land" from Peter Pan. She is Wendy and the dance combines her group along with two others in the next age groups (the Tinys and the Petites). I think that they will blow them away!