WCS Art Show

Rylan had a piece of his art chosen for the Williamson County Schools Art Show at the Frist!  Each school in the county gets to pick two pieces from each grade level and Rylan was on of the two kindergarten students from Clovercroft!  We are super proud of him!  We love that we have kids that enjoy so many things (though I admit it wears me out!).

What's really crazy is that Carter's exact same art project was picked by his art teacher when he was in kindergarten (and there is a new art teacher at Clovercroft this year!)!!!  Here's the link to that post two years ago!

After viewing the student art work, we got to stick around and enjoy the ArtQuest area with the kids.  They spent about an hour creating lots of new masterpieces :)

Home

We got back Saturday from a trip to Orlando where we did 4 days at Disney and 2 at Universal.  More to come soon!!!

Gray

Poor Gray rarely gets the opportunity to nap in his crib.  Yesterday afternoon he fell asleep during halftime of Carter's basketball game.

We went out to dinner afterwards and he finally let me record his silly face ...

School Progress

The boys' school does parent-teacher conferences once a year in October.  And then there is pretty much no more communication about academics with the teacher after that.  At least we have never had any.  Not even to tell us when Carter was getting pulled along with a few classmates for what he called "special math" with the gifted teacher.  So this year I have been trying to stay more involved.  I have always gone through the work the boys bring home (often with them) and help with any homework, but I'm "bugging" their teachers more this year to ask questions.

I recently sent both boys' teachers emails asking how they were doing.  I asked if they were struggling with anything and if we needed to work more on anything at home, as well as a few other questions.  Here are their responses ...

Rylan:

Rylan is not struggling with anything. He is on track. His reading level for DRA (a system kindergarten uses) was just recently rescored. He is at a 16. Most of the class is at a 4,5, or 6. My three highest students, (not including Rylan) are all 8’s. He is well above everyone else in reading. He is getting pulled during PowerBlock for math, however I am contacting Mrs. Doizer this week to ask why he has not been pulled for reading. He should be in reading enrichment.

Rylan does seem to get very embarrassed if it’s something he doesn’t know. Because he is so much higher than everyone else I try to give him the challenging questions. Most of the time he can answer with no issue, however if he struggles he seems to be a little sad. I have also noticed if I don’t call on him to do everything he gets upset. I try to remind the class that I have to call on everyone and that if I don’t call on you this time I might next time.

Rylan seems to love write the room, reading with Selma (they read higher leveled books together), anything that involves drawing/illustrating/coloring, and leading calendar time.

I do plan on sending books home again! We just retested everyone’s level, so I was waiting to get those levels back to readjust books that are being sent home before I do that again! Would it be okay if I sent home with Rylan a little chapter book to read instead of the little readers? I think this would get him really excited to have a chapter book to read because 1. Its longer and 2. He can definitely read the ones I have!

Here are Rylan's winter scores that came home yesterday:

Test	Winter Score	Winter Target
DRA - Reading Level	16	Spring goal 4-6
STAR	98%	46 - 99%
LSF - Letter Sounds	47	16
NWF - Fluency	83	16
QDM - Quantity Discrimination	28	13
MNM - Missing Number	21	8

Carter:

Thank you so much for checking in on Carter! Carter is continuing to excel in all areas and he truly goes above and beyond the standards that we cover. He is being pulled with a math and reading enrichment group to continue to excel his progress. I will be sending home a sheet towards the end of the week similar to the one you got at conferences to update his winter reading and math scores. I have also seen an improvement with his spelling. I feel like he is really paying attention when sounding out words which has helped his writing immensely. Keep doing what you all are doing! He works so hard at school and does his very best! Please let me know if you need anything else!

Here are Carter's fall & winter scores:

Test	Fall Score	Winter Score	Winter Target
QRI - Reading Assessment	3.4	3.8	1.8 - 2.8
Oral Reading Fluency (Aimsweb)	131	157	80
STAR (Reading Comprehension) Computer Test	94	87	Scores are percentile
Math Concepts & Applications (Aimsweb)	31	41	15
Math Computation (Aimsweb)	38	50	31
STAR (Math Skills) Computer Test	99	98	Scores are percentile

Valentine's Day Cards

The boys' Valentine's Day cards are ready to go!  We made them again this year.  Both definitely fit their personalities!

Carter's:

Rylan's: