School has been keeping all of us busy, and in a bit of a daze, over the past month or so. I am excited to see that there is a big jump in the rigor between Kindergarten and 1st grade. Abbie now has a planner that she writes her homework assignments in every day. She has homework every night. It doesn't necessarily take long, but it is setting the foundation for times in the future when the homework will increase. They have a spelling test every Friday based on a list of words that goes home the Friday before. They have started studying fractions in math. Just like last year, they have Spanish four days a week and Chinese one day a week. Of course, there are the other standard topics, as well - reading, language arts, science, social studies, penmanship, music, art, and PE. Also, there in more rigor in the grading this year. They are now on a 100-point scale that corresponds to letter grades. A mid-semester progress report came out a couple of weeks ago and showed that so far Abbie is doing well.
She has been participating in science club on Monday afternoons. One of the science teachers takes the kids out to different parts of campus to collect bugs, etc. I'm not sure that she's learning much but she seems to be having fun. The poor teacher, on the other hand, always looks frazzled and worn out at the end. I get the impression that it is twenty 1st graders that mostly just run wild. On Tuesdays, she is still doing ballet lessons after school. Recently, we have decided to add violin lessons with individual lessons on Monday afternoons and small group lessons on Wednesday afternoons. These lessons will begin next Monday and will be after science club. It is Suzuki method, meaning that a parent needs to attend the lessons to help with practice during the week. We'll try this in the Fall and see what happens. Of course, taking violin lessons was something that Abbie had been asking about for a long time. Then, once I got this all arranged, I said, "Abbie remember how you were always asking to take violin lessons?" She replies, "Well, actually, I think I'd like piano better." Naturally, this was not the response I was expecting, but I guess I should have known. Anyway, she was pretty amenable when I told her that it was going to have to be violin because this is what I set up for her. Anyway, I'll keep you posted on how it all goes.
