Wednesday

Claudia did all her math homework last night and then realized about half-way through she got off one and did the wrong problems. She was upset but way too tired to re-do everything last night, so Jamie the Super Awesome got up Super Early with her this morning to help her get it finished before school. She's had a *lot* of homework this year and she's been such a trooper about it, I'm really proud of her.

Here's a photo of Claudia on her way into school this morning. It's possible that she got really mad at me for taking her picture and it's also possible that this afternoon I promised not to violate Claudia's Personal Policy of Parental Embarrassment again. So....enjoy!



I went to Jordan's curriculum night last night and the more I know about this school, the more impressed I am. I have to say I think it's even better than the schools we were in in Texas, and those schools were really good.

Jordan's classroom is very colorful and the teacher is very creative in finding ways to challenge them in fun ways. For instance, they get a list of spelling words on Friday and they have to choose six different activities off of a long list, to do with the words. The activities include writing each word in a different color, looking each word up in the dictionary and writing down the words that come just before and just after, putting the words in alphabetical order and reverse alphabetical order, writing a letter to someone using all the words, writing a poem with the words, etc. So you're getting much more than just how to spell the word.
And she's sensitive to the kids as well. Last night she gave us three sheets of colorful paper to write notes to our child which she'll keep and hand out to them, maybe tuck it into their book or whatever, if she notices they're having a hard day.

They're doing a lot of homework, but I'm really pleased with how it's structured. She has them doing a little math every night--both problems and 10 minutes of math facts. By the end of the year they should have all of their addition and subtraction facts memorized (obviously and most of them do) and all of their multiplication facts as well. I was impressed with this set of parents because they seem really involved and excited about the process of educating their children. At one point everyone was sharing ideas about how to teach multiplication facts. It was very cool!

The teacher wants parents to be involved and I appreciated how she created opportunites for working parents to help. We can donate magazine and post-it notes and she'll send things home for us to do if we can't be there during the day. I've always liked doing that sort of thing because I feel so much more connected to what they're doing in school.