Quick update before kids come home. Had parent/teacher interview with Edzea’s teacher, Mrs. Cardy, today. Edzea’s doing well as expected. She mentioned a few things:

Edzea demands quite a bit of attention, always has lots of questions, gets concepts much quicker than everyone else and so takes things to heart and thinks about them a lot.

This led into a conversation about the lockdown/fire drill earlier in the week which I forgot to prep her for. Her teacher felt badly because it was a bit chaotic and Edzea seemed to understand more than the other kids what it was all about and hence was extremely concerned about the fire and getting out of the school. Her teacher didn’t have time to answer all of her questions and hence…sent her to draw about it…she drew a huge fire with screaming children all around.

High aptitude for art, no surprise there. Lots of drawings. Teacher had a hard time getting her away from the art table for the first 6 weeks. She’s now finally heading into other stations now. She mentioned that she is way ahead in her visual communication, drawing, letters etc.

Is way ahead with reading etc. Teacher will be sending home books beginning in January. Every night a different book. She had some suggestions to work with Edzea more on sight words and less focus on phonetics which is what I had been doing. She is concerned that I need to be careful not to turn her off reading. I had sent notes in her lunch bag last week and one day, she mentioned that Edzea had quite a bit of attitude about the note. Refused to look at it, didn’t want it in her bag etc. Nothing new. She says that if Edzea sees anything as failure then she may get turned off. We know this. Perfectionist tendencies.

So she suggests that I keep getting her to write, her versions of words/sentences and not to correct her but to point out the letters that she got right!

Socially, I was concerned as she often comes home and mentions that she is having some difficulty with her friends. Mrs. Cardy in  a very nice way mentioned that Edzea likes things to be “her” way and that she does have great ideas but it might help her if she let other people lead occasionally and follow their ideas as well. Also, to suggest to her to smile a bit more-she’s been scowling at people lately when she doesn’t get her way. Let her know that it is more welcoming and makes friends want to be around you more if you smile.

In general, kept saying she is sophisticated and because she’s so bright don’t lead her so much as let her direct her learning as much as possible.

Is very sophisticated, very bright. Feels that maybe we should consider having her learn an instrument. Feels that she needs a cognitive challenge and that it would keep her busy during times when she needs more. Reading music, playing by ear etc. Feels that would be a great thing for Edzea.

First off before I forget, Edzea completed and passed into the highest level for swimming that she can do until she turns six. Tim took her to her last lesson on Monday. I have her signed up for the highest level now that she is going to end up repeating and repeating until she turns six and can join the Red Cross programs. A bit frustrating but she doesn’t know what level she is in. It’s just swimming lessons to her. I haven’t told her anything about levels.

But the thing I’m really proud of her for is her FEARLESS’ness. Tonight she was reading a new book. We do a new little book every two nights as we go through her “reading lessons” at night. Tim made a good point that this whole thing is win win for us. We’ve tied reading lesson at night to napping in the afternoon. No nap, no reading lesson. She LOVES her reading lesson so it works out pretty darn good for us.

Anyhow, I digress. After we finished book 11 in her 12 book series…she wanted to play some games on her chalkboard. The one she likes the most is simple. You write a word on the board. She sounds it out and guesses what it is. SHE LOVES THIS! 3 letter words are a snap for her now. And depending upon the sounds of the 4 & up letter words…she still tries and we throw new ones at her that have no bearing on her books. Anyways, we played this for quite a while tonight. She was so good it was fun to do. She laughs and giggles and says “you can’t stump me!” So, as a final one…I said well if I come up with something like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious…you’ll be stumped. She says…write it Mommy write it…so I could barely fit it across the board and even though we both knew what it was, she started sounding it out from the beginning. She was sitting away from the board, not using her finger to keep track of letters and just kept sounding EVERY letter out until the end when she just laughed and said…expialidocious! That’s fearlessness. A 4 1/2 year old being completely unafraid and uninhibited about reading that she would attempt to tackle a word like that. We are blown away with her capacity to learn to read.It’s really fun to teach her!

Also, the cute part is that she is trying out words on us. She sounds out words and writes them out for us. It’s VERY phonetic. Like extremely literal. She corrects us with the word “stop”. She writes it “sdop” because to her that’s what it SOUNDS like.

Today she wrote on her board for me to guess: “siderele” which translated was Cinderella.

Then “cid” which was kid.

It’s very rewarding to teach her and she seems to truly enjoy it! Ok, that’s it off to bed.

Edzea and Rohan are now in the same dance class as there was an opening and I was able to get him into class. Edzea was being a pain yesterday as she had fallen asleep in the car on the way to class and was refusing to participate. The little 2 year old in the light brown outfit-he’s the smallest in the class…you’ll see was trying his best! So cute to watch him!

Hip Hop Dance

Monday: Woke up with Pink eye so had to cancel volunteering with Edzea’s fall fun day at her school on Tuesday

Tuesday: Fender bender: my fault trying to reposition Red Beast of a MiniVan in the parking lot at the preschool. Injured our car and the one next to us…and it just happened to be the crazy french lady’s Mom’s car which made it even better! She’s a fun one to deal with.

Wednesday: Halloween. Asked to come back to volunteer as teacher felt pink eye would be non-contagious. So, I did, she also asked me to whip up some icing to bring in. I worked hard in that classroom that morning. No sitting around enjoying watching my daughter in school for me. Took another child to office for an injury, drew and cut out 30 teddy bears, poppies etc. Helped kids ice cookies, filled note totes and then packed them into backpacks while Amanda took Neve and Rohan to the Brown’s cooking class for me.

Thursday: Took Holden for Aimee. Crazy french lady accosts me at the preschool about payment for her car!

Friday: My free day. Kids at daycare. My accomplishment day…

12:30 phone call from Tim telling me that I need to answer my phone more…

Edzea was missing. The daycare called. She wasn’t dropped off. The school didn’t know where she was. They had no record of her for that day. I was stopped behind what seemed like it might have been a huge accident on Fernbank road, police cars blocking the road, fire, ambulance everything and Tim telling me to get home ASAP to see if Edzea was there…she was missing for 40 minutes. Luckily, I only knew about it for 10. Tim got back to me as I was on my way over to the school…she was dropped off 40 minutes late at the daycare.

The story is mixed and won’t know everything until Monday. There was a fire on Fernbank Road and the van got detoured…BUT…the driver didn’t remember to bring her to daycare. She brought her home and then Edzea remembered (or this is what we can gather happened). School calls me back after she was found to apologize. Turns out the van was NEVER supposed to take her to daycare. Protocol was all messed up. She should have been on the school bus each Friday. The driver is in deep…

After dinner tonight, I went to the washroom for 2 minutes. Heard a bang and a cry from Rohan. Then he really started to wail. Came out to find him bleeding from the head in Tim’s arms. They are now at the hospital for the big gash on his eyebrow.

Oh, and I’ve had acid reflux all week.

So, here’s hoping things start getting better NOW!