The start of school has come and gone and I'm way behind. Olivia started 4th grade this year. She likes her teacher, Miss Slagh (Slaw). She an older lady and seems to be kind of old school and doesn't put up with laziness and communicates well with parents (us). We are glad and hope this year is the year Olivia will enjoy learning. Each year there seems to be a subject she struggles with and then falls behind only to catch up the next year and then fall behind in another. This year she is behind in language arts (LA). Interestingly, all the 3rd grade teachers that taught last year are not teaching 3rd grade anymore, apparently because the 3rd grade class did terrible on the LA portion of the standardized tests by the state. I could have told you that was going to happen. Their method of teaching is atrocious. The kids read whatever books they want (that are given points for difficulty) baby books or 3rd grade level and then they take a multiple choice test that tests their reading comprehesion. Only it's not really monitored, except on a trimester basis, so if your kid is not doing those tests (like ours wasn't) or not doing well or choosing really easy books to read (again like ours was) then your kids can't learn much or get feedback or help on how to improve on a regular basis. I was actually appalled at how they taught the subject. NEVER did Olivia come home with LA homework. Later we learned that any LA projects they did in school never came home and frequently were not finished by Olivia. Her last year teacher was so disappointing and her excuse was "Well, there are 28 kids in the class." Yes we were appalled, but not gutsy enough to go to the principle about it. Instead we just tried to work on it on our own. We told her new teacher our concerns and her struggles and she reassured us that the 34 students in her class will not be an excuse to keep her from informing us on Olivia's progress. She still struggles with math but doesn't seem to "hate" it as much as she used to. We are glad! Olivia is also keeping busy with piano, soccer and activity days.
We were so excited to start Benji in preschool this year. He's a little young, three in October, but he's potty trained and does pretty well in nursery, no anxiety leaving us. We signed him up at the same place Olivia went before she started kindergarten. The same teachers are there, which we liked. There are two big rooms, a playground, a garden, two sheep, and a fish tank. He was so cute his first day and he was so excited that he could go to school like Olivia. Sadly, it did not go so well. He's too immature. We tried for almost a month, but he just couldn't follow directions, sit in a circle, clean up when time and he's kind of aggressive when confronted by other kids. He had to leave one hour into each school day. The teachers were very sweet and apologetic, hoping they could make it work out, but it wasn't getting better. I feel bad for Ben because he really enjoyed it and cried every time he had to leave but all he wanted to do was play and I think that it's OK, he's just not ready.
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