We had parent teacher conferences with the girl’s teacher the other day. They are in their first year of preschool, and will have one more year after this one. They have an October birthday, so they will be the older kids in their class.
One of things that their teacher talked to us about were Kindergarten Benchmarks. The Benchmarks are a list of things that they would like for your child to be doing before they start Kindergarten. Overall, Molly and Taylor are doing very good. It’s kind of funny, because I personally think that they are doing great and they are just so smart to me. Everything they do just really impresses me, so it is always hard to hear anything negative about your child. Not that it's really a negative thing that they don't have all of these benchmarks mastered. I mean they do have a year and a half before they start kindergarten.
They have different centers in their class room for an open learning type environment. The children have the freedom to choose the centers that they want to play/learn in. I was pleased to hear that Molly and Taylor have no problem breaking apart and playing with other kids in different centers. Their teacher did tell us that they do check up on each other, which is really cute. She said that Molly will be playing in the Library and Taylor will be in Home living and Molly will yell over at Taylor, “You ok Tay.” So sweet!!!
Both Molly and Taylor play well with others. Taylor tends to be a little bit on the shyer side; however I was told that if there is an odd number of kids in the classroom, Molly tends to be the one left playing by her self. :(
Molly tends to stand up for the underdog. She pipes in when someone is being mistreated and spouts out the rules. If a kid is taking a toy from another kid in the class Molly will step in and let them know that they need to share.
Their teacher said that they have great imaginations, and love to play in “Home living.” They make up different scenarios and like to play “house.” She said that there is a little boy in their class that has really attached him self to the girls. I guess he has a hard time expressing creativity and imagination, so can often be found following one of them around mimicking how they play.
We were told during the conference that from a teaching standpoint it is easier to teach a child their ABC’s or how to count, and that it is defiantly more difficult to teach a child Social and Emotional Development. This is where Molly and Taylor really exceed. They are very much in tune to other people’s feelings and they have no problem expressing emotion. They already hand out the compliments to make others feel good.
She gave the example of how easily they will compliment a friend or a teacher. I know this because they give me a boost everyday by telling me how “bootyful” I look or how they like my shirt, or my shoes, or my hair…etc. What can I say they are just naturally sweet. :)
They both speak clearly and in full sentences. They follow two and three step directions. They identify most body parts. They can count to 10 (actually Taylor did not do this during the test, but I know that she knows how to do it!) They can hop on one foot or stand on one food for ten seconds which is better than I can do…haha. They can identify most shapes and pictures of different objects. They recognize all colors except for brown???? And they know their full name and age.
Taylor favors her left and and Molly uses both her left and right hand.
Some things we need to work on are drawing out shapes and letter recognition. Once we have this mastered we will move on to reading and writing and multiplication and division tables. :)
So, overall it was a good parent teacher conference. If you can’t tell I am really very proud of Molly and Taylor.
A closer look...
And my niece Anna Claire loved playin in his dog house...
The Scale
14 years ago
