Josh and Becca Thrap and Family

Thursday and Friday were parent/teacher conferences. My first conference for Cameron was Thursday evening. At parent night at the beginning of the year I had expressed a concern to Cameron’s teacher that he would be young for the class and small. I didn’t doubt his abilities, but he’d had the least preschool and I hadn’t worked with him nearly the way I had with Jacob and Elise to learn things like the alphabet etc. So, although he seems to be enjoying school and making friends just fine, I was a little nervous to get his teacher’s evaluation. I needn’t have been. She said that she had also worried about him because of his late birthday, but that he was learning quickly and getting along fine. She said he is an absolute delight to have in class and she just loves him. He’s very animated but not disobedient. She said he’s just the kind of student every teacher hopes for! Awww
I had Jacob and Elise’s conferences first thing Friday morning. Jacob’s teacher says he is just a sweetie and that he’s doing fine in everything but she’d like to see his reading words per minute increase faster than it has and that all the kids are now working with 3-digit subtraction and having some difficulty so we should practice that at home until he’s comfortable with it. Elise’s teacher and I talked mostly about Elise’s bathroom needs and her glasses, and she said she can tell that Elise is a worrier and that she gets upset when she doesn’t know something. But she also said that Elise is excelling at reading and writing–so much so that she is part of a small group that the teacher works with separately which will probably cover everything they’re supposed to for the whole year by Christmas break and then they can work ahead. She wanted to show me some of Elise’s free writing samples, but she had a dilemma. She has folders that she keeps for each student with examples of their work to compare at the end of the year to show their progress. For most children she just picked one story writing example and let the parents take the rest that they’d worked on that month. Elise, however, had spent the entire month of free writing continuing and elaborately illustrating one story–which she said is just very advanced thinking for this age. She let me bring the story home to show Josh and let Elise tell us about, but we have to send it back for her folder.
The kids didn’t have school Friday so Josh took the day off work so he could stay with them while I went to conferences and then as soon as I was done we left for Muscatine to attend Josh’s brother Brian’s farewell party. He leaves on his church mission to Brazil next Tuesday.