The Highs and Lows of Pre-K4

We are now 4 weeks into the school year and Christopher came home today with his very first Take-home book from school! When I took it out of his backpack, he said, "I can read that to you!" Believe it or not, he did! Here's a video of him reading his book!

Ok...so it's not exactly Gone with the Wind or even Charlotte's Web...but it's a start! What I love is that he's so excited to read! He read it to me several times, then he read it to Daddy when he came home! We've always known he would be a reader...he has held books and studied the markings in them (we know those markings as words) since he was an infant! I have always been amazed at how he would just hold a book (even one without pictures) and look at it for hours, turning pages...if you didn't know any better, you would have sworn the boy was reading! Below, you can see an actual page from the book he read above:

As you can see, his High Frequency Word this week was "MY" - all other words had a picture to help him figure out the words. One step at a time!

Unfortunately, all is not gold in the world of Pre-K4! Each day, the kids come home with a ticket that tells the parent what kind of behavior they had that day. Green is the best, Yellow is not so good, and Red is the worst (and results in a visit to the Pre-K Director and a call home). Thankfully, we haven't experienced any red tickets (and if Christopher knows what's good for him, we never will)...but, sadly, we have seen a few yellow tickets. These are not acceptable...and David and I both believe in the philosophy that if you get in trouble at school, you also get in trouble at home! Having been a teacher, I know how important it is for teacher and parent to work together to correct behavior. Thankfully, Christopher has a wonderful teaher this year and we are most certainly working together! Please pray that God will give us wisdom to know how to handle each situation that arises as we seek to guide Christopher to be the man God wants him to be.

This week, I had the blessing of talking with the mom of a child who was in my Kindergarten class eight years ago. This child also had some behavior issues that his mom and I worked very closely to correct. As I talked with his mom at a Homeroom Mom's meeting this week, she shared with me that this child had no more behavior problems since that time and is now a straight-A student in 8th grade. It blessed my heart not only to get the update on C.A. but it also gave me hope with Christopher!