The scariest time of the year

No, not Halloween. Parent-teacher conferences. ;)

In all honesty, they went about as expected.

Alex does well when he applies himself and pays attention, but he has a really hard time focusing. He's really struggling with the concept of money (he knows pennies, dimes, nickels, and quarters but struggles with adding up coins of different denominations) but his addition and subtraction are making good progress. His handwriting has greatly improved although he has his days of being sloppy on occasion (shhh...don't tell, but he has better handwriting than some of the other kids in his class!!). Rhyming is killing him...I've got to find a way to teach it to him visually at least as a starting point. He doesn't get that the ends need to sound the same for two words to rhyme. He continues to do amazingly well in spelling, including spelling dinosaur, October, and September right on his verbal spelling tests!

Tim is doing great with phonics and numbers but gets bored in class and acts up. I'm not a bit surprised. We did most of the stuff they've been working on in kindergarten over the summer. His handwriting could stand a lot of improvement but until they get into second semester he's going to continue to be bored with the work.

Danielle loves school and it shows. She's had some behavior issues but usually not the same one twice. :) Most of that is just trying to figure out how this life-outside-the-orphanage works. Her teacher was a little concerned that she didn't know her colors or her numbers yet, but I assured her that Danielle is right on track with where she should be at 5 months home.