Hannah Banana and Amelia Bedelia

We had our first ever conferences last week for Hannah.

I knew it would happen and it did.  I cried.

As soon as we sat down and Ms Stauffenecker started telling us about Hannah, it started.

I actually held it back pretty good but I had to work at it.

She started the conversation saying "I can't say enough good things about Hannah."  She told us about how Hannah is doing really great in school.  She is well behaved and gets along well with others.  She is a leader among her peers and plays with everyone, even the kids that nobody else wants to play with.  She is helpful and follows directions. 

Her teacher was very impressed with her drawing skills and showed us her journal where she has been drawing pictures to express herself.   The first picture in the journal was a family picture.  We turned the pages and looked at picture after picture.  It was so fun to see her drawings and the types of things that she thinks about while she is at school.  It was so nice to see that in all of the pictures all of the people were smiling and happy.  All of her drawings were happy and colorful- not that I expected anything else.

Finally we went over her progress as they compare to her Kindergarten Goals.

At the time of the reports she was struggling with telling the difference between the lowercase b and d and had trouble identifying l and q (thinking i and g).  But doing very well with learning her site words, the letter chart and handwriting.

Her math concepts were pretty much in line to where they should be for this time of year.  At the time of the report eval she was a little behind in the concepts of less and more (what's one less (or one more) than ____) and excelled in more than one area.  She is performing above her grade level in her ability to solve math problems with sums of 10 or less and with the Cardinal Principle (counting collections).

The whole time we were with her teacher, she walked Hailey around her classroom and showed her all of the things that they do during the day.

When her conferences were over we headed over to the Book Fair and got the girls a few books.

Everyone knows I have never been much of a reader.  I have read many books that I have really enjoyed and when I get into a book I do enjoy taking the time to read but since we have had kids it has been hard to get into it again.  

Hannah is learning to read in Kindergarten this year and she is very excited about it!

They have a goal to learn a certain number of 'site words' during this school year and she has been loving it!

Our goal is to read for 10-15 minutes at least 5 days per week.   

At the Book Fair, Hannah was really struggling on which book to buy.  She walked around and around the room looking for the perfect choice.  I spotted an Amelia Bedelia book and was able to talk her into buying it.  That night we read the book and she LOVED it!

We actually laughed out loud at some parts and Hannah surprisingly understood why the book was funny.

Amelia Bedelia was given a list of tasks to complete. One of the items on the list was to change the towels in the bathroom so she got a pair of scissors and changed the towels.  Hannah cracked up.

At one point I would read the item on the list Amelia Bedelia was to do and Hannah would start giggling while she told me what she thought Amelia Bedelia would do.  "Mom, I bet you she's going to put clothes on the chicken!"

One thing I loved about reading this book with her is that I remember sitting with my mom and reading this book when I was little.  I remember loving these Amelia Bedelia books and thinking that she was so funny.  Thinking back, I am not sure if I was old enough to really understand why her actions were so funny or if it was the way my mom read the story to me that gave away the way I should react.  Whatever it was, it left wonderful memories that I now get to share with my own daughter.