Saturday, March 14, 2015

Kindergartener

Raf has had a very busy couple of weeks at school. Last week was literacy week and there were lots of fun events to celebrate - including a book fair where Raf picked up a new chapter book, 'Captain Underpants'! He finds it absolutely hilarious...! One of the events was a pajama party at the library. As a big surprise, Raf's teacher was one of the readers. The boys, though, especially Charlie, were not in the most cooperative of moods, and I was very thankful when Rich showed up half way through the evening so he could take care of Charlie, who was more interested in running around like a lunatic, while occasionally looking at some of the very cool train displays. 


Wednesday was 'wacky Wednesday' and the children had to dress up in a way to embody that idea. Raf wore all his clothes backwards as well as wearing odd socks...





Sadly I didn't get a chance to take a photo of Raf on the Friday, dressed up as someone he wants to be when he's a grown-up (a train driver, of course!). Charlie, not to be left out, dressed up as spiderman all day. He even came to Raf's swim lesson as the little super hero. 


This week was Raf's teacher/parent conference. Charlie has been very poorly but our lovely neighbours watched the boys so both Rich and I could attend. The first thing we noticed when we got to school were some really funny pictures of the children in the hallway. Here's Raf's picture age adjusted to 100 years old! He seems to age well!


Raf is doing really well in kindergarten.  He's made big improvements in his sight word recognition and counting since his last report card in January, and continues to love learning. Mrs Marshall commented on his sweetness and silliness.. and indeed he is very very silly! The entire class seems to be quite silly, which Raf must truly relish. The other day, apparently, Raf just couldn't stop laughing. Mrs Marshall had no idea about the cause. I asked Raf about it and he said, 'I just couldn't stop thinking about Charlie in his diaper this morning, and his funny little legs' (nice!). He's also being a little more daring - especially when it comes to breaking rules. The other day Raf came home from school and told me, 'Mummy, recess was a DISASTER'. I asked him about it and apparently he'd been running in the hallway with his friends and was caught by the Principal. This led to some time on the thinking chair. I thought this was a bit harsh until Raf retold the story later in the day to Rich and tackling was mentioned, too.

I like the idea of Raf being a little bit naughty at school because he's generally such a rule follower and people pleaser. One thing that Raf needs to work on (and this wasn't news to us) is his independence when doing activities. He has a very low threshold for frustration and lacks confidence when he's working on some school work.... He likes to have Mrs Marshall there when he's working, but given there are 14 other children in the room that's not always possible. He really does become frustrated, though, and we need to work on strategies to foster some confidence and independence (we have the exact same issues at home). When he worked with a literacy support teacher (who he doesn't know very well) he didn't exhibit the same behaviors so we're wondering if it tends to develop a little more when he feels very comfortable with someone. It might also be the group setting at school which triggers the anxiety and frustration.

Over all he is doing so, so well. He is one of the youngest in the class and I had worried that he might not be ready for kindergarten but thus far he's really flourishing. Indeed part of the meeting involved a discussion about his placement in first grade next year. We're considering a team taught classroom, which has children from second grade join the first graders periodically throughout the day. We think this will be a good fit for him so we're going to try and work on getting him in... we'll see how that goes. Mrs. Marshall thinks it will work well for him, so she'll be a good advocate, I'm sure.









1 comment:

  1. It’s really great to know that Rif is doing very well in kindergarten. Well, I am lucky that we found a really good Phoenix kindergarten for my daughter. She is really happy and her teachers are really great in handling kids.

    ReplyDelete