Riley’s second two months of PK3 have gone really well. He still tells me most mornings that he doesn’t want to go to school, but he doesn’t cry and he doesn’t fight going into his building once we get there. He also tells me a lot that he wants to be in PK4 so he can go to school in the big building and ride the big rides at the fair. Sweet boy.
The themes they learned about over the past two months were “Family Fun,” “All Kinds of Families", “Places We Go,” “People We Meet: Community Helpers,” “Things That Move,” “Our Community: Going Green,” “Awesome Animals,” and “Animal Homes.”
They learned about letters “D” through “K.” They worked on counting and sorting objects, patterns, recognizing numerals, and ordering objects by size and length. They learned about simple maps and position words. In religion, they learned about the Ten Commandments, what a sin is, baptism, the importance of good citizenship, prayer, forgiveness, and how to love others as God loves us.
They made green eggs to celebrate the letter “E.” They played a Thanksgiving counting game and an animal matching game. They painted with cars. They went on a treasure hunt and a nature walk.
Kenny and I had a parent-teacher conference with Ms. Amanda on November 4. We chatted for a few minutes about how Riley is doing, and she ultimately said he’s doing great. Since he’s one of the youngest, our main concern was his social development, but she said he’s interacting with the other kids just fine. I also spied my Riley-bean’s school picture hanging on her bulletin board next to her desk while we were there.
Oh, and when I went to help decorate the fair booth a few weeks ago, I spoke with Ms. Jean, one of Riley’s PE teachers. She said he’s so funny since he comes into class and immediately tells her, “I’m gonna sit right here and wait for Mama.” But she did say that when he sees all of the fun the rest of his class is having with the animal bean bags or hula hoops, he gets up and joins in.
He comes home singing all kinds of little songs. My favorite one is “all day and all night, the angels are watching over me, my Lord.” So sweet.
Every once in awhile he’ll come home with a little sticker on his shirt or his hand because one of his teachers “caught him being good.” I love this little practice. It’s such a great way to praise good behavior and make the kids feel special.
I learned that Riley shares his goldfish with Alcee, the girl who sits next to him at lunch, and he even requested that I send her some goldfish of her own. Twice. So cute. And he talks about Claire (his partner) and Aiden all the time at home. He also told me that Kolston helped him get up when he fell outside one day.
He came home one day back in September telling me, “I’m a bad guy.” This scared me at first, until Kelli told me the kids must have been playing good guys vs. bad guys during recess outside. Whew! Although, why couldn’t he be a good guy???
I also learned that Riley and some of the other kids like to play in the mulch outside, even though Ms. Amanda tells them not to. He comes home quite dirty most days. (Whoever decided that school uniform shirts should be white must have been out of their mind.) He has also had a handful of potty accidents the past two months, mostly because he doesn’t tell Ms. Amanda in time when they’re playing outside.
They went to two more all-school masses, had a popsicle day, learned the hokey pokey and their fair dance in PE class, got treats from the Grandparents’ Club one day, and visited the book fair.
They even had a visit from a fire truck for Fire Safety Week. (Riley was actually home sick the day before and I was crossing all of my fingers and toes that he wouldn’t miss seeing the truck. He didn’t!)
They colored lots of pictures, completed lots of art projects, and had lots of treats for various birthday celebrations. (He often comes home with a very dirty face.) Many of the projects must still be at school, but I know they’ve painted pumpkins and created special hats for Halloween, as well as made family finger puppets; “Ff” fans; paper plate elephants, pumpkins, turkeys, and jellyfish; paper igloos; and pilgrim/Indian hats.
They were assigned two take-home projects. The first was to make a family collage, which we did in the beginning of October. And the second was just this week, when he had to pick a disguise for Timmy the Turkey so he wouldn’t get eaten on Thanksgiving. He chose to dress Timmy up as a rainbow giraffe.
Riley also knows the “Our Father” prayer and can recite the days of the week and the months of the year. See?
We also finally received his first official school picture back in mid-October. How cute is my boy???
Today is the PK3 Thanksgiving Potluck Party and then they are off all next week. The end of the semester is going to be here before anyone knows it!
1 comments:
Love knowing what Rileybean is learning. So much!
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