Mr. Smartypants

Tyler's report card came today. I'm very proud to report that he got all As! His reward was being allowed to pick out ANYTHING for dinner. I figured we'd be heading back out (once I got home from zumba) to McDonald's but he surprised me when he requested homemade waffles. Well that's easy enough.

So a feast was had! And man I need to make homemade waffles more often!

Corduroy Makes a Cake (or Tyler reads his first real book)

First grade has proven no different than Kindergarten in terms of what they expect the kids to learn. I am in awe just about every day when I go through his folder. I just want to yell, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THEY ARE LEARNING TENS AND ONES? SPELLING TESTS?!!!" I know for a fact we did not have spelling tests until 2nd grade. I remember it very clearly because well, I tried to change a word on a pretest "knead" that I spelled "need" and Mrs. Murphy caught me trying to fix it. Man I was humiliated.

Okay, anyway, how about I talk about what this post is actually about. Tyler read what I consider to be his first official book tonight! He's been reading little stories that were sent home last year and this year in his readers. You know, 5-6 pages of sight words basically. And he's even read a few books that are more what I consider to be preschool age appropriate. But tonight, he read a 32 page book (well probably more like 20 b/c some of the pages didn't have words) with minimal help from me. It was a Corduroy book if that means anything to you. I admit it didn't to me but I guess there's a whole series of books about this bear named Corduroy. The one Tyler read was "Corduroy Makes a Cake."

Oh and he read it to Delana too. It was so cute!

More sentences by Tyler

I am continuing to be amazed by Tyler's progress in school. He has learned so much this year - it's really crazy! I am so proud of him.

Here's some sentences he wrote today at school:
Me and my sister has fun in the tub. I can see the ro(c)k fart

Ooookay, maybe that one doesn't make on proud. Here's a better one!

Last nite (night) we slep(t) in the caipr (camper).
I was on time for the bus.
On Saturday me and my sister play(e)d a game ca(lle)d chas(e) araod (around) the grach (garage).


I think he's pretty damn amazing!

Sentences by Tyler

Every day they write sentences at school and they used to be pretty basic "I like....." and easy things like that.

Lately though they've been getting longer and more indepth. The two he brought home today made me LOL. Hope you get a chuckle.

"On Saturday me and my dad winte (went) to Loes (Lowe's) an(d) we made a flawer (flower) for moth(e)rs day."

This is the one that actually made me laugh:
"I gave my mom the card and my mom liket (liked) it and she loved me and she is in love with me."

Isn't that too cute??

Sentences by Tyler

Recently Tyler and I assume the rest of his class have been working on writing sentences. It's really fun for us to read them when he gets home.

Here's some for you to enjoy:
My grama is getting a white van.
I like gramas white van. I like my dad.
I like to vacuum and I like vethdbls (that's vegetables and he really doesn't like them - little fibber!)


And for St. Patrick's Day, they filled in the following sentence:
If I found a pot of gold I would.....
He wrote:
giv it to my Dad

Man do I ever hope he finds that pot of gold soon. Bryan probably won't share it with me though. Hmph.

a VERY GREAT day

Today has been, well, a VERY GREAT day. I assume most of you who read my blog (if any that is) also are friends of mine on Facebook & on my mom board. And so this means that if you've been paying attention, you know I've been hitting the gym HARD core since 2010 began. I've started weight training as well as cardio and I even tried a zumba class once (which I really did enjoy, thanks April) and it's been going pretty damn good if I do say so myself. On my mom board, we are having a Biggest Loser Challenge contest and Fridays are our dreaded weigh in days. Today marked week three and so at 7:00 this morning, my VERY GREAT day began. I'm down 7 lbs since I weighed in on January 8. SEVEN POUNDS! I weigh the least I have probably since I was 18, no lie!!

Then I get to work and overall had a fantastic day there due to some budget news. I'm not at liberty to discuss it on a public forum but trust me, VERY GREAT news! Not even 8:30 yet and I've had two VERY GREAT things happen. The rest of the day was good enough. And then I even hit the gym before coming home and had another excellent workout (watch out TBLC bitches!) before coming home to the easiest dinner in the world - PIZZA!

The final part of the VERY GREAT day was Tyler's report card. The boy kicks ass, that's all there is to it. He received a 100% on EVERYthing. He didn't miss a thing in reading or math:
identifies upppercase & lowercase letter 26/26 (13 sets)
letter sounds 13/13
reading high frequency words 15/15
writes uppercase & lowercase letters - 26/26 (13 sets)
shapes 4/4
recognizes numbers 11/11
1 to 1 correspondence (?) - 10/10
counts to 50 - checkmark
patterns - checkmark
orders events - checkmark
100% !!!!!!

He also received a 4 on writing which means he "writes in complete thoughts with conventions of print and some words spelled correctly." This one really makes my day b/c last 9 weeks he received a 2 so he has really improved!

Then, Miss Thornburg remarked in the comments section:
"Tyler works hard on his assignments and is anxious to please. Keep up the good work!"

The above statement made Bryan remark - what is he, a dog? LOL

So yeah, like I said it's been:
a VERY GREAT day!!!!

Sometimes it's better not to ask

Today on my mom board (you're going to find out I talk about this place a lot - we've been together as a group for over 6 years) there was a discussion about how to get our school aged children to open up more about their day. This is a constant struggle with Tyler. He's mostly happy to report: "oh we learned stuff and went to (insert special here). That's all mom." Yeah, that's descriptive right? It also makes me wonder just who this kid belongs to as I'm pretty sure I was FAR more talkative at that age. In fact I know I was - my grandfather didn't call me "Windy" for nothing you know.

So anyway, back to today and the discussion. There were several good suggestions for "better" questions to ask to get better answers. One of them I really liked and decided I'd try it out today on Tyler on our way home. And so it goes:
Me - "Tyler what did you like best about school today?"
Tyler - "Oh I'd say the funnest part was the end of the day."
This excites me - I mean after all he did say FUNNEST! Yes, this is working! Awesome!

Me - "Oh really. Why? What made it the most fun?"
Tyler (quite exasperated I might add) - "Because that's when we get to go home!"

Communication: FAIL

MLK through the eyes of a 5 year old

The following conversation took place between Tyler & I on the way home. At first I was so confused, wondering where this all came from. However a friend on my mom board suggested that they probably had a lesson about Martin Luther King, Jr at school. Duh! Why didn't I think of that?

T - "Mom, Mrs. Powell (a K teacher at school) is brown."
M - "Oh she is? What do you mean?"
T - "MOM - she's brown!"
M - "Tyler do you mean she's black?"
T - "No, black people aren't allowed in my school. She's brown!"
M - "Okay, does she have black hair?" (trying to figure this out)
T - "How did you know that?"
M - "Well Tyler most people that are brown have black hair."
T- "Well grandma (my mom) is brown and she doesn't have black hair!" (so now I'm really confused!)
M - "You mean Mrs. Powell is tan, like when you go out in the sun in the summer?"
T - "MOM - how would I know? I only see her face. She wears clothes to school!"

Ooookay then.