Monday, January 24, 2011

Scholarly Dan


As I've indicated in the past, Danny's preschool is fairly intensive academically for this final year before kindergarten. Especially now, in the second half of the year. All of that hard work on their penmanship is now put to use in weekly spelling tests, the first of which Danny took last week. I was relieved to find that our studying was not laborious, and that he knew the words from the first time we sat down to take a practice test. Nevertheless, I was eager for the report of how the test went. He was fairly enthusiastic, and much taken with the concept of the "privacy folders" his teacher gave them. As he explained it, the folders provided each of them with a sort of office space, "like Daddy has at work." I had been wondering how the teacher would avoid the wandering eyes that would surely afflict these youngsters, so this makes perfect sense.

My favorite moment was when I pulled the test out of his bag and saw his grade. I exclaimed over it, and it became clear that he didn't know what his score was. So when I explained it to him, he was pretty pumped. So much so that a moment later, I heard him in the bathroom talking to himself: "100! How about that?! A+, baby!" Pretty cute. You'll also notice the improvement in his handwriting from just a month ago when working on his Christmas list!

In addition to spelling tests, Danny's class was assigned a project to support their upcoming field trip to the aquarium. Each student was asked to pick a sea animal that can be found at the aquarium and to do a poster about it. This project had to include the name of the animal in the student's own handwriting, a picture of the animal drawn by the student, and three facts about the animal. Danny chose the hammerhead shark, and he and Tim worked hard this weekend to produce what I think was an excellent, age-appropriate poster. Danny truly seemed proud of his work, and was never reluctant to practice presenting it, either.

It's a relief to know that our little Star Wars fan can still focus well on other topics!

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