Oh yeah...

I forgot to follow up on the last post. The conference with Erin's teacher went great. She said that Erin is right where she should be for this point in the school year, and that it is totally reasonable for us to expect that she WILL move on to first grade next year.

This is huge. Erin is one of the youngest kids in her grade, having only turned five several days prior to the start of the school year. She had to catch up fast to the others who were so much older, and honestly, more ready than she was for the things that would be asked of them as Kindergarteners. Erin struggled really hard at first, and was completely lost. Was it not for her spending this year in the class designated for kids in her position (scored low on the beginning of the year tests) to receive more individual attention and catch up, I don't think she would have fully caught up. She did, though, and she's gone from one of the lowest scoring kids in her grade to scoring squarely in the middle. That is a huge deal to us. She is going to be able to move on next year, and will start off at her new school in El Paso with a strong academic background. We will miss Taylors Creek. It's a great school. We're really glad she got to at least start off there, though.

Today, I have to remember to take Erin to the book fair after school. We were going to do it yesterday, but she had her after school tutoring program to go to (yet another Taylors Creek perk!) and she didn't get out until 4:15, so the book fair was closed. We'll go today, though. She's dying to get the sequel to Pinkalicious, which she picked up at the last book fair. That sequel? Purplicious, of course! We're also going to pick up any of the "must haves" that we find, and anything with a Caldecot medal. That's what we normally do. We let her get a couple silly titles that catch her attention, and then we pick out several more that we think would be good additions to our collection, and these are always gender-neutral books, of course.