Halloween and more!

Here are the Halloween pictures, as promised. Abbie had a great time - running around the neighborhood, bobbing for apples, and stocking up on all sorts of treats. These are the pre- and post-festivities photos, and you can see the evolution from calm to sugar-crazed. :)

Other news in Abbie's life - We had her parent-teacher conference this week at the Montessori school. This was an important piece of feedback for us because we really aren't intimately knowledgeable with respect to the Montessori curriculum and materials, and because there are no grades, and not much work that comes home, so we often don't feel like we have a good sense of what she does all day. The short story is that she is doing very well.

The document that we received layed out Abbie's strengths and areas for growth in three categories - Communication skills and social development, Individual work habits, and Academic performance. Abbie's strengths are that she contributes to group lessons, is willing to help others, is building new friendships, seeks appropriate help when needed, is adjusting well to the Montessori procedures, understands addition and subtraction with exchange, adds creative thought and detail to her writing and research, and reads with fluency and comprehension. Her areas for growth are being respectful while others are speaking, using a quiet voice during work time, moving towards consistent self-planning of work, and memorizing her multiplication facts.

None of this information was all that surprising for us, but one interesting finding that did emerge is that once Abbie nails her multiplication facts then the speed of her progress in math is going to increase substantially because her other math skills are already very high. This was exciting to us because I think that Abbie is getting ready for more of a challenge in math, and apparently it is right around the corner!