I've not written anything here for a while, basically because I've had nothing to say. Yes my life has been THAT boring.
However, last night was parents evening for Isabelle. This is her first school parents evening and I was more than ready to find out how she's doing in school. One of my concerns was how she interacts with other children her own age as she's growing up in a very adult world with no young siblings to squabble over toys with etc.
Her teacher said that Isabelle is a very very caring and giving person, sometimes to a fault. I was worried that her 'giving' was put down to her thinking she had to buy friendship with kindness, but this isn't the case. It is just her nature. Her teacher, Miss F, said she has been working with Isabelle to get her to realise that Isabelle is important and she can do things for Isabelle sometimes rather than for someone else, because Isabelle does matter too. She is very helpful in class and because she is so eloquent and can step up to any level of conversation and understand it, it is sometimes too easy for the teachers to go straight to Isabelle when they need help because they know the job will be done correctly.
On an academic level, she is very intelligent and is actually top of the class on her ability to do the tasks set including her word learning and her maths. She grabs concepts very quickly and off she goes. This also gave me concern as to how far they would be able to go with her. The way the school system is run now (not like when I was at school) is that they cater for the child in question. If they are capable of doing a higher level work, the school will provide it. They won't hold her back because 'that work is for older kids'. Now I'm not saying for a minute she's a genius, but she is very capable of doing simple maths such as; if we have 6 items how many more do we need to make 10? She finds these very easy, so that goes without saying that she can count continuous to 100, she can add numbers together and take numbers away. She is only 4! Not only is she only 4, she's the youngest in her class by quite a long way. Because her birthday is at the end of the school year, she is in a class with children who are already 5.
At the moment the class are working with the letters s, a, t, p, i and n. This is giving them the basics for phonetic reading. Isabelle has known these letters for quite a while, but her teacher is now getting her to make words with them. She got out some magnetic letters and asked Isabelle which ones she would need to make the word 'sat'. Isabelle found them. She then said, she'd now like the word to say 'sit' so which one would Isabelle need to change? without hesitation she changed the a for i. The then said, now I'd like it to say 'at' so which one do we need to take away? Isabelle removed the s. Miss F said that this is excellent for a child of her age and that not many children in the class can do this yet. I told Miss F that Isabelle is constantly writing and drawing at home and very often asks for a word to be spelt out so that she can write it. She knows her letters and can write it down from my spelling without having to copy it. I've even started giving her three letters of a word at a time to see if she can remember them, and she does. She's now started writing her own words down from sounding them out to herself. She doesn't get them all correct but she has a damned good attempt. Vowels are usually the cause of the incorrect spelling. So we were told, don't hold her back (not that we would), if she wants to do it, go with it and the school will do the same. That was very re-assuring to know.
And for her pearl of wisdom today - she reminded me that it's 'no clothes day' at school tomorrow. She actually meant that it's non-uniform day LOL
