Last week was parent teacher conference time again. I met with each of the kids teachers and their music teacher.
Alli’s teacher is on maternity leave so she has had a long term sub for the last six weeks with three more to go. Her regular teacher is nice but Alli seems to click with her substitute a little more. Her name is Mrs Hathaway but she goes by Mrs Happy. She is a boisterous person with a large personality which fits Alli well. The first thing she said to me is when I walked in was, “Hi Sugar! Your Alli is a little spit fire, she doesn’t take any guff from anyone, and I love her for it. She is a future leader.” I was expecting a bear hug the way she was approaching me but instead got a hand shake and a hand on the shoulder. We talked for about 40 minutes and I am glad Alli has the opportunity to have her for a few more weeks. She is kind of like Alli’s own Mary Poppins. Mrs Happy has noticed and seems more aware of Alli’s traits and strengths and weaknesses more than any other teacher she has ever had, and she has been actively focusing on her to help her improve. Alli is doing well in school. The two biggest areas she struggles is her spelling tests and the comprehension portions of her reading tests. Mostly for lack of effort and rushing. Mrs. Happy has made an effort to call Alli out and give her strategies and processes to improve in those areas. After some eye rolls from Alli (sigh) and some of Mrs. Happy’s own ‘no guff policy’, Alli has improved steadily in both areas the past few weeks. She seems to be more willing to do her homework too. Mrs, Happy also pointed out she loves Alli’s friendship with her new best friend this year named Carly. She described them as serious, no drama, solid foundation, riding the same wave length friends. They are quite a pair, and they seem to get each other. I am proud of how hard Alli works at school and the effort she puts into her work. I agree with her teacher. She is a born leader and she is a force to be reckoned with. She has amazing potential, Ryan and I just hope and pray we can help her channel it in the right direction.
Matthew’s teacher said he is doing really well too. Matthew really spoils me when it comes to school. He has always been good at getting his homework done and turned in without being asked. He is pretty self sufficient with everything and responsible. I’m crossing my fingers that his organization and self motivation will continue and be a permanent trait. Math is one of his best subjects, he says he doesn’t like it but I think he does. He is getting a little streak of the beginnings of a teenage boy silliness and cockiness but he is a good kid. I can count on one hand the number of times he has forgotten an assignment since he started kindergarten and he has never just not done it. Than remains true for this year too, until orchestra.
This year HE decided that he wanted to be in the orchestra and picked the violin to play. He has orchestra twice a week for a half hour. This makes the progression through lessons fairly slow. The first semester was a little ridiculous, over the course of four months they learned six notes and were supposed to pluck them (they don’t learn the bow until after Christmas) for 100 minutes a week. ‘Mind numbing boringness’ is what Matthew called it, and I couldn’t blame him. As a result he became pretty lax with his practicing and I let him. After Christmas they started learning the bow and a few more notes and playing more songs. After some reminding, nagging, prodding, incentivizing and more nagging his practicing habits stayed pretty much the same as first semester. So by the time conferences came around last week he had a nice F for his music grade.
When he told me about his F he said it with the attitude of that was just how it was and it was out of his hands. I asked him how much he had been practicing and he said, “A lot its just to hard .” The ‘just bad at it’ excuse. I told him he was full of crap and all he needed to do was practice consistently and he would get better. His grade was a result of his lack of practice not his inability. Then to prove my point I challenged him to a violin play off. Basically I spent about half an hour learning how to play ‘Twinkle Little Star’ on the violin, then we went in another room where no one could see us and each of us played it without telling those who were listening who was playing. The results… Ryan, Alli, Emilee, and his friend Carson could not tell who was who. Matthew was a little embarrassed to be bested or at least matched by his mom who until thirty minutes before had never touched a violin and decided he would put more effort into practicing. He now has a B in orchestra.
three cereal boxes, four 2 liter bottles, all covered with tin foil then colored to look like different colors of slime because it says “I love slime” all over it. She has been working on it for three days and still has some finishing touches. She also spent a few hours making her valentines and organizing them and checking and rechecking her list.
My analytical brain had a hard time figuring out how to ‘just pain
She seems to really like it. Ryan is hoping she will like it and they can share the love of basketball together for years to come. She has the height-she is estimated to be 5′ 9″, and she seems to have a bit of natural coordination which Ryan hopes will translate to athleticism. It is hard to say, a good 25% of practice is still spent practicing her cartwheels, but that is way better that the 75% of soccer practice she spent doing somersaults last Fall. Emilee is giving her first talk in Primary this Sunday too. She is excited about it but has a little shy side to her so hopefully she will actually say it when the time comes.
She did a good job and almost placed in the top three for speed but not quite. Alli has an artistic side and she had fun painting and blinging out her car with glitter. January is cookie season for Girl Scouts. Selling door to door is one of the last things I want to do but Alli (being the polar opposites we are) is all for it. She dragged Ryan out with her a few times (I was always busy…) and 85 boxes later she was not even close to done but Ryan was. They have cookie booths that the whole troop will sell cookies at too so she can look forward to selling more that way.
forward to dropping the piano as soon as I will let him, but plans on continuing with the violin. He is in a year round baseball academy. Ryan and him share a LOVE for baseball. When Fall Ball was over the coaches told everyone to rest their arms and not even play catch until after Christmas. In the mean time the academy has a strength and agility class called Boost they want him doing as much as possible. He has been doing that a few times a week and working on his hitting. I’m excited to see him hit this coming season. He has improved a lot. I love that he is working out on a regular basis too, hopefully that will instill a habit in him to continue in the future. While he was waiting for regular practices with his team to start again-which they did this month- he played basketball with an Olathe Rec team. Matthew is naturally athletic so any sport he tries at he will be at least decent. He has not been practicing basketball very much though so he has lost a lot of his dribbling skills…and shooting skills…but he has been enjoying it, even though he says he just tolerates it until he can play baseball again. His baseball team has several kids that play indoor soccer together too so he is trying that out. It isn’t very time consuming, not even a practice and game every week, but it is one more thing to keep him distracted from video games and stupid You Tube.