First Parent Teacher Conference

This is a picture of Hadley in front of one the bulletin boards that you first see when you enter her school. I wanted to take a picture of it because this is the "birthday" bulletin board. Her name is on the pumpkin to the right of her.

We had our first Parent/Teacher Conference this week, and it was very strange for me to be on "the other side" of this experience. I like Hadley's teacher a lot, so it was pretty easy for me to not act like a 5 year old.

The school gives the kids two assessments that I think are pretty thorough. One is several pages long and looks at all aspects of Hadley's intelligence. The other one they showed me had about twenty concepts on it that Hadley had mastered "age appropriately." After each concept, the teacher wrote one example of how she knew Hadley had mastered the concept. I appreciated the teacher taking the time to do this because it was fun hearing about the things Hadley's doing in school.

Hadley had a perfect score on all of her reports except for one thing. The teacher put Hadley in front of a mirror and asked her where Hadley was. Hadley pointed to herself. I thought this was a riot. I can see Hadley looking at her teacher and thinking, "What do you mean, 'Where's Hadley?' I'm right here." Jesse said the teacher should've asked, "Where's Hadley's image?"

At the end of the conference, the teacher gave me a list of things I could work on with Hadley if I wanted to. The items range from "sequencing" to "zipping up coat." So this seems like a good time to show off another little project that I've been working on for awhile. I started a new blog called "Sit a While" and you can find it at: http://sit-a-while.blogspot.com. I can't figure out how to write a link on this post, so for now you can either click on my profile, and get to the blog from there, or you can cut and paste into whatever that thing is called at the top of your computer where you write new addresses.

My idea for this new blog is to document the conversations the girls and I are having with the books we read together. Clearly, Harper doesn't have much to say yet, but it won't be long, and reading to Hadley is one of my favorite things to do. There are only about 5 posts so far, but hopefully I'll be able to add more soon. Also, I allowed ads on this new blog for professional purposes. I thought it would be fun to pretend to be a freelance writer.

So there you have it. Next week is "The Big Three." It is hard to believe that three years ago today I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs wondering WHEN THIS KID WOULD GET HERE. I haven't sat around and twiddled my thumbs since.