School Work

Students are learning about transportation, numbers from 1-30 out of order, the ll letter and how to tell time:

Literacy at Home

Beyblades and other art activities seem to consume his time:

Tiger completed at drawing class

Parent Teacher Conference

Parent Teacher Conference

We spent almost an hour talking to Sra. Oliver about Jedadiah and his academic performance in class. 

We are so grateful that his teacher took the time to speak to us in English about everything.  He is doing so well with his writing, letters and reading.  For math, I will need to challenge him at home because kindergarten math is too easy for him.  He can complete all four math worksheets in a matter of a few minutes, while some students are only finishing one math worksheet in the same amount of time. 

For his second trimester report card, he had 6 Outstanding, 3 Satisfactory and 1 Serious Concern on his Reading Comprehension.  For this weak area, I will read to him more in Spanish and ask him to talk about the book in Spanish.  There is a great county library close to his school that has countless bilingual books for us to choose. Overall, we are so proud of him and all that he has accomplished these past six months.  He is doing excellent!

Week 25, Feb. 20-25

President’s Day

School Work

Yet another busy week at school:

Home

He keeps himself so busy doing various things that I sometimes can't photograph all of his creations.

A writing web

Literacy at Home

This week, Jedadiah wanted to learn how to write his name in cursive writing.  So, here is his first attempt at cursive writing.  The example I wrote is on the bottom of the whiteboard, his signature is at the top of the board:

Career Day

Career Day

Thursday was career day, where the kindergarten attended six presentations.  Some of the presenters were a doctor, a lawyer, a soda distributor, a photographer, and a break dancer

(b boi).  I think the lawyer and the dancer made more of an impression on Jedadiah.  He volunteered to dance with B Boi and Sra. Oliver has a great video of Jedadiah doing a head stand and break dancing on the ground.  When he talked about the lawyer, he said that the lawyer had to study first for 4 years and then for 3 more years.  He said that’s a long time.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him how many MORE years of school he has to attend to receive his education. What a great opportunity for all of the students to hear the presentations by such educated and highly trained professionals.

Meeting with Mrs. Willis

Meeting with Mrs. Willis

Samara and I met with Mrs. Willis on Tuesday morning. We chatted amicably for about 30 minutes about the No Excuse program and some ideas I had shared with her, about the Dual Immersion Program, and the Parent Advisory Board and the school.  It was a refreshing meeting.  She is a wonderful principal.

Dual Immersion Family Forum

Dual Immersion Family Meeting

Thursday’s meeting was hosted by 4 different families who shared about their cultures.  Three of the presenters were from various parts of Mexico, and the other family made Chicago their home.  We had lots of delicious food to sample: Mole, black-eyed peas, collard greens, banana-leaf tamales, guava candy and some other candies from the Guanajuato state of Mexico. 

LL and ll

LL and ll

While doing his homework this week, Jedadiah share with me that this letter has a special rule.  When you write this letter you can’t do like this:

                        Ll or lL

Instead you need to write it out this way:

                        LL or ll

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

On Tuesday evening, Jedadiah had quite a bit of information to share about our 16^th president, Abraham Lincoln.  He even told Samara that if she wanted to be a lawyer, she had to read 25 books a day just like Abraham Lincoln.  Jedadiah said that Abraham Lincoln was poor, but that he was hard-working and became the President of our country.  I am always amazed at all that children can retain and retell.

Week 24- San Valentin

Week 24-Feb. 13-17

San Valentìn        Valentine’s Day

We prepared Valentìn bags filled with home-made brownies, a pencil, a rice crispy treat and a few other goodies to give to all of his classmates.  In addition, Jedadiah wrote out 24 Valentine cards to give to all of his friends. 

When I picked him up from school, he had several goody bags from other classmates and a big mail truck filled with cards from some other classmates.  He said, “I am beginning to like Valentine’s Day.” I said why because you got lots of candy today but he said no because today all I got to share with all of my friends and they shared with me.  I thought this was a good notion of what true love is…Valentine’s Day has become so commercialized, but I think Jedadiah understood what the day really is supposed to be.

Play date

I think he finally found a friend from school who is compatible.  Emiliano is playing with Jedadiah today, and they are having a wonderful time playing soldiers, beyblades and legos.

Daddy & Daughter Dance

Daddy & Daughter Dance

Although Samara is not officially a student at Home Gardens, she participated in the Daddy & Daughter Dance on Friday.  In fact, the entire family attended the event. 

Khin was the official DJ, where he prepared two hours of dance music in both English and Spanish.  He did an outstanding job getting most of the dads to dance with their daughters. I thought Jedadiah would be shy with all of the girls, but he didn't even seem to notice. He danced with several of his classmates and played with the brother of Dayana.
This dance had double the attendance as the Mom & Son dance held a few weeks ago.  It seems like everyone had a great time and left with big smiles on their faces.

School Work

Considering the face that I don't completely understand, I think that Sra. Oliver said that he had earned 100% on his tests that he completed on Monday. We will receive his second trimester report card on Feb. 22, when we will have our second conference with Sra. Oliver.

Literacy at Home

Literacy at Home

Jedadiah made up a game, where he wrote the names of different people or objects and Samara and I had to match the first letter with the corresponding name.  He created this game and wrote out all of the cards.

Ella & Aquì

Ella & Aquì

These two words still give Jedadiah some difficulty.  He always spells them correctly, but sometimes he confuses the two words.  Sra. Oliver suggested having him write the words with glue, salt or paint so that he could feel the spelling of the words.  This is what we did to reinforce several of his sight words.