The first weeks of kindergarten

After sending emails to Noah's grandparents, I started to think that maybe other people would like to see what Noah is up to and how his mother is handling life as a kindergarten mom. Though I will continue to maintain our website, I wanted a place where I could keep track of all the moments that I felt were note-worthy. So here are a few of the things I wrote during the first weeks of kindergarten:

August 28, 2008 (kindergarten, day 4)
Noah had a great first week. He has been excited getting on the bus each morning and is always smiling when he gets off the bus. He usually doesn't share much of his day with us until supper time and then it all spills out. He brought his lunch the first two days and had hot lunch the second two days - pizza and spaghetti! He's got the next couple weeks decided as to when he'll bring his lunch and when he'll eat there. He's also very excited because they serve chocolate milk at breakfast and lunch so now we don't make him drink milk with supper. The things that excite a 5 year old! He had his individual screening done this morning and the teacher told me that he did a "wonderful job." Not that we expected anything less. ;) He hasn't said it's boring since that first day, so it did indeed get better. After next week they start going full day and I think that will make a difference too.

September 5, 2008 (day 8)
Noah is now finished with week 2 of kindergarten! This means that on Monday he will begin full day classes (8-2:30... on the bus at 7:20 and home again around 3). It also means that on Monday he gets to enjoy RECESS!! I think he is looking forward to that the most. He was a bit disappointed when he found out that there was no recess for the first two weeks of school. He
seems to be doing really well so far. They started their behavior charts this week. The goal is to stay "green" each day... the steps are green, yellow, blue, red. Yellow is a warning, blue is no recess and red is a trip to the principal's office. Noah has been green each day this week. :)

Now, on to the assessment scores. Basically, each kindergartener was given two tests required by the Ohio Dept. of Ed. Kindergarten Readiness Assessment for Literacy has a scale that looks like this:
0-13 - intense instruction is required
14-23 - specific skills need to be targeted
24-29 - enriched instruction is appropriate
Noah's score was 29 out of 29!
The 2nd test, Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills has two sections: letter naming and sound identification. The scale for that is:
Letter Naming:
0-1 - at risk
2-7 - some risk
8 or more - low risk
Noah's score? 37 Yes, you read that correctly, it's not a typo: THIRTY-SEVEN
The 2nd section:
Sound Identification:
0-2 - at risk
4-7 - some risk
8 or more - low risk
Noah scored a 12 on that one... so when the teacher who did his assessment last week called me to tell me he did "wonderful," she wasn't joking! :)

Thought you all would like to know about our little kindergarten prodigy.

September 8, 2008 (day 9)
I just got off the phone with Noah's kindergarten teacher and I'm just beaming! I had to share with you what she had to say! She said she wished she had a whole roomful of Noahs. He's a great leader and she said she usually holds up his paper as an example of what everyone else's paper should look like. She said that he is a very good listener and follows directions all the time. (our Noah??? lol) She said she is just so happy to have him in her classroom. It's always nice to know that Noah is well-behaved when I'm not around to make sure! :) Anyway, I thought I would share this with you. Michael and I are both very proud of Noah - for good reason!

September 14, 2008 (weekend after day 13)
Noah came home from school Friday yelling, "MOM! I CAN READ!!" and then proceeded to read me a little book they did in school... basically with the words, "I CAN" and then pictures of things like read, eat, run, jump, etc. He was very excited. Later that night, after we put him to bed, I could hear him in his room talking (as usual) so I went back to see what he was up to and he was reading Green Eggs & Ham out loud to himself. He read it to me last night and so today, we recorded it. I tried to put it up on YouTube but it didn't work so will try again. (I never got it to work - sorry!) I was telling a teacher at church and she said he could read because someone told him he could... she said with some kids, that's all it takes - someone telling them they can do it. I knew he was close but didn't know how to make it click for him... I guess Mrs. Vandermark said just the right thing on Friday because now he's reading like crazy. He read another book to me too and he's in reading a book to Michael right now. :)

September 23, 2008 (day 20)
Noah has the start of a cold or maybe he's just dealing with allergies like me (still!). Anyway, he was crying this morning b/c he didn't know where to put his snotty kleenexes on the bus. I told him to just put them in his backpack pocket (like he did yesterday) and it would be fine. Then, just before the bus pulled up he started crying. He said he wanted to stay home, even if he had to stay in bed all day. I convinced him that he would rather go to school, helped him blow his nose, got him calmed down and onto the bus he went. He sat down, looked out the window, waved and as the bus pulled away he started crying again. NOW I feel like a horrible mother. I had asked him if he wanted me to drive him to school and he said no, he just wanted to stay home. No fever or anything, just a runny nose. Yesterday after school he told me that he was homesick at school so I guess he's starting to figure out that the school day is a pretty long time to be away from me and it's just now hitting him. So I'm sure that factors in. It's just hard to watch him ride away crying, especially since he's never done that before. He should be getting to school right about now so I'm hanging around to make sure they don't call for me to come get him. He's probably fine and has forgotten that he wanted to stay home by now. :)