1st Grade and bedtimes

 Well, now that Doug and I have gone to our first parent/teacher conference of the school year, I guess I should tell you about Evelynn starting 1st grade. So Evelynn started 1st grade this year. And she was very happy about it. :) She has the first track of school, meaning she starts at 8:00 am and gets done at 2:15pm. It took us a few days to figure out exactly how much time we needed in the morning to get ready, which lead to the first day of school having an extra 30 minutes before we had to leave. But we've finally got the timing right to incorporate maximum sleeping time (for me, not for her. I've only had to wake her up for school 2 or 3 times) and still accomplish the morning to do list. Like I mentioned, Evelynn, and now Eloise by default of sharing the same room, have become early risers, much to my dismay. Instead of waking up at 7:30 like they have been for a long time, it is now 6:30. Which means that the normal 8:30 bedtime was just an hour too late, and meltdowns were becoming way to frequent. We're slowing moving bedtime up as the days get shorter. We're somewhere between 7:30 and 8:00 now, and its improved the overall house mood quite a bit. I also brought up an old alarm clock for the girls, not intending it as an alarm but as a way to regulate when they left their rooms in the morning. Starting netflix unsupervised at 6:30am is not a good habit I'm thinking. We had a lesson in numbers (mostly for Eloise's sake) and emphasized what 7:00 am looked like, and what it meant if they didn't see that magic number 7 on the screen, and what they were allowed to do before the 7 appeared (stay in bed, read, stay quiet, go back to sleep) and what they were NOT allowed to do (come out of their room, scream at each other, scream at mom down the hall that they wanted breakfast, etc). It's been working out rather nicely, except for the first two nights. Somehow, magically, twice, the switch was turned on to activate the radio alarm to go off at midnight, at full volume. Two nights in a row. Hopefully someone has learned their lesson about messing with the buttons and getting alarming noises blasted in their room.


But back to Evelynn and school.

This year we put Evelynn in the Spanish immersion program. She goes half a day to school with a teacher who speaks almost 100% in Spanish and drills the kids on reading, vocabulary, and math. Then she switches to another teacher for the rest of the day in English to reinforce reading and other subjects (science, social studies, etc) and the elective classes (art, music, computers, gym). I was a little worried about her at first, not because I didn't think she could handle learning Spanish, but because I thought that she would be frustrated with learning a whole new set of language rules. She is an amazing reader and phenomenal at phonics (she sounds at words in the scriptures with almost no help, big words, like words I still mess up saying) but she adheres to very strict rules in her mind, so I was worried that the transition would be uncomfortable. But no. She's doing fantastic. I was also slightly worried that she would sound like an American speaking Spanish, with a strong American accent. But no. She's got a wonderful Latin accent coming through. It's pretty remarkable what she has picked up in just 6 weeks of school! She knows the Spanish pronunciation much much much better than I do, and she sounds out the words using the new rules like a pro. She doesn't know more than 5% of WHAT she is saying, but after meeting with the teacher I've come to find out this is normal. Learning the speaking rules comes first, and you slowly build up the comprehension and vocabulary. The homework they have been giving is a little intense though! She has vocab words, 20 minutes of Spanish reading, 20 minutes of English reading, and then the normal math and "other" homework. I'm learning several bits of Spanish myself. I mean, I'm bound to pick up a little bit if I have to quiz my own daughter on her vocab words. Oso--bear, sapo--frog,  casa--house, mesa--table.... and maybe a few more. :)

Like I mentioned, Doug and I met with both of Evelynn's teacher's last night for parent/teacher conferences. It went rather well. They both spoke highly of Evelynn and said she was an excellent reader but needed work on her comprehension. We've been working on it, and already we've seen improvement, but more practice is needed. I read....somewhere....can't remember now, but I read somewhere that it's vital that your kids have good reading and comprehension skills by 3rd grade, because after 3rd grade they will start learning their material through the books they read, not just from their teachers. Like science books. Eventually you start reading and learning from them as much as you do from the teacher. So we're working on it. They did a bunch of testing the first part of school (SEP testing) and she registered high on reading but average to below average on math. Her Spanish teacher (Mrs. Revuelta) said that we shouldn't rely on these testing scores because trying to get 20+ 1st graders to take a math test on a computer in the same room is almost impossible, so the important thing was that there was a definite improvement from kindergarten, which is all they are looking for at this point. Both of Evelynn's teachers also commented on what a joy she was to have in class, that she was super sweet, attentive, respectful, and responsive, and as Ms. Bates claimed, "A breath of fresh air!" Doug and I smiled and said sincerely, "Oh, that's so good to hear!" and then shook our heads and laughed. I don't think Evelynn is a bad child at all. She is all those things her teachers said and more, but I think she uses everything she has at school and has almost nothing left when she gets home. Ah well. :) Six hours is a long time to behave as a little kid, so I try and cut her a little slack. We love our 1st grader, and we love that she loves school. I hope Eloise loves school as much as Evelynn does. At the moment it's a little hard to pin Eloise down at home to have her practice her letters and numbers for more than 5 minutes at a time, but then, I'm only mom and not a "real"authority. Evelynn already thinks her teacher knows more than me. We had an argument (which I won, thank you) about when fall started and October began. Like I said, I won. I think she misheard her teacher, or her teacher misspoke, but it was imprinted in Evelynn's mind as absolute fact, until I proved otherwise. I'm sure there will be many more fact checking moments to come.