Kindergarten is a trip you guys. From the first day at drop-off, to sitting in those tiny little chairs at parent-teacher conferences.

I was excited for conferences. I knew Rylee was doing well, but I was looking forward to hearing about her progress. So excuse my while I brag about my kid for a few minutes.

They do a questionnaire/worksheet the  first week week of school to gauge where the kids are at. Then they follow it up at the end of the first quarter to track progress, and again a few other times throughout the year. In just over two months, her progress is pretty amazing.

While she knew all of her letters to begin with, her handwriting has come a long, long way. Her teacher told us last night that she had recently been bumped up to the highest reading group…skipping one full level. It’s a little bit of a stretch for her right now, but she seems to be up for the challenge. Just recently at home, I’ve noticed that things with reading seem to be clicking a lot more, so that all makes a bit more sense now. She is writing words and sounding them out on her own. According to the new Common Core standards, she meets or exceeds all of the benchmarks.

Her math is probably the most impressive. Since they only have a 2.5 hour day, they don’t focus on it a ton in class, but her teacher sends home math-based challenge homework with her almost weekly. While there are some pretty advanced concepts, like “which digit is in the tens column”, greater than/less than and even word problems, we work through them with her and she picks it up pretty well. She can count by 2’s to 16, by 5’s to 105 and by 10’s to 100. She’s trying to figure out how to tell time, even though they’re not teaching that right now. She is exceeding the benchmarks on all of the levels. She really seems to love math.

As far as citizenship goes, she is is a joy to have in class. She comes to class each day with a smile on her face and ready for the day. She is compassionate. She knows when to raise her hand. She follows the rules. She has fun and socializes when it’s appropriate, but she focuses on work when it’s quiet time.

Right at the end of the first quarter, they did a little awards ceremony for her class. She came home with 3 out of 3 awards given that day…perfect attendance, outstanding citizenship and math excellence.

Overall, Rylee loves kindergarten. Loves. And it really shows.

She happily climbs onto the giant bus each morning.

She works really hard. I am seriously just so proud of this girl. I love her love of learning and I hope it’s something that continues for a long, long time.

My hear swelled three sizes during that parent-teacher conference {ok, maybe my head a little bit too}. Andy & I actually high-fived eachother once we were in the parking lot. Sometimes we get flack for how “strict” we are with our girls and it’s nice to know that when we’re not around the foundation we’ve worked really hard to set is sticking with her.

Yup. Kindergarten. I kinda wish we could freeze time.