Last night I went...

to my first parent conference thingy. It was Literacy Night! With the exclamation point and all. The flier said learning techniques for you and your child. So, everybody brought their child. Apparently, that wasn't necessary. She was whisked away by one of the teachers to the gym where they "had babysitters!" Well, I had a babysitter at home with whom she could have stayed. Not good enough, apparently. As they pried Madison from my clenched fists, I actually asked, "I have to go in there alone?" I gave a little chuckle at the end so as not to appear to pathetic. It didn't work. Madison was even shaking her head at me.

After finding the largest chair in the room, I took a seat. I was actually worried all day about having to sit in the little chairs for fear of crunching that thing into a cube like the car smashers when it bore my full weight. As I sat, I noticed other parents had papers. I had no papers. What happened to my papers? I forgot to sign in. So I got up and went to sign in. On my return, I noticed my bigger-but-not-so-big chair had been occupied by an elderly woman of Asian decent. Picture any old Korean woman portrayed in a MASH episode. That was her. She weighed a buck soaking wet. I could literally have picked her up and moved her to another chair with one hand. Needless to say, I was a little perturbed. Probably not at her just myself for having forgotten to sign in. As luck would have it, I found a similar chair in the back and I took my seat.

The presentation started. Let's just say kindergarten teachers are happy people. Happy happy fun joy. It was all good though. They are very dedicated to our children and I couldn't be happier with the results. There was one aspect of the teaching techniques that I found odd. I guess it is like the new math. This was in the context of learning letter sounds. They said if a child spells cat with a K don't correct them praise them. If when you say apple all they write down is a "p", that is what they hear apple to be. The p is the apple to them.

Umm.....O.....K.....

I sort of, if I stretch it, can see their goal here. Let the child understand the letters and the sounds before we begin to correct the spelling which comes later.

But I still don't buy it.

I think this type of thinking has produced a generation of people that are going to vote for Obama...I bet you didn't think I could segway kindergarten learning techniques into an indictment on society for voting for Obama. I can pretty much do that with any topic...I guarantee you I can make my child feel happy about spelling cat correctly even if he/she started out with a K. Children need to be loved. Told they're loved. Shown they're loved. If you do that, someone can correct them when they spell a word wrong. The classroom is for learning. We'll handle the warm fuzzies. I can actually hear my teacher relatives rolling their eyes.

Moving on, she showed examples of children's writing on the board. She showed four advancing levels. The first one just had random letters on a page. But that's OK, don't get me wrong. If that's what the child "feels" then that's correct...even though it isn't...The second had the word "harid" which was hayride of course. The third had a sentence about going on a hayride. The sentence was read by the student on the film clip. Pointing at the words and reading the sentence in a choppy fashion. The fourth example was of a student with "very advanced" writing skills. She showed us the story had a beginning, middle and end. There were uppercase and lowercase letters used. (BF moment) It was Madison's.

I plan on attending many more of these learning nights. If only to have something to write on my blog.

Ian is recognizing more letters everyday. He is putting puzzles together all by himself. He still has an issue with someone getting in his space when he's playing but we're working on it. He can be so kind and caring. But then he can be like me too. We are working on potty training. Hopefully soon. I'm sure Kelly is tired of changing diapers. We'll just keep loving him and see what happens.

I'll bet Chompy is walking before Halloween. She is so close. It helps to have two older siblings showing her what she's missing. She is into everything. Not unique I'm sure but jeez louise; I'm talking everything. In less than a month, we're off formula and onto milk. We're in the money. Woot Woot Woo!

All is well under our roof. Hope it stays that way a while.