Walking Report Cards

So our school does something kind of fun. In Kindergarten (with all my kids thus far), we have done a walking report card. It gives parents an opportunity to come in and take an oral quiz with their child so they know where the student is in their learning process.

This year I got to do one with Ethan in Kindergarten and Matthew in 2nd grade. Ethan is at the lovely stage where he is too big to be little and too little to be big, so most of the time he is a real handful. However, when it comes to learning, he is an absolute joy! He just craves knowledge.

Often I will print off 10-15 worksheets off the Internet and he will go to town and have them all done within 15 minutes--and they are all correct. Mind you these worksheets are typically 1st or 2nd grade level work.

So, doing the walking report card with Ethan was very entertaining. He zipped through everything and read most of it to me. The one thing he had trouble with was following oral instructions (i.e. get up get a drink of water, go get a pencil, and sit back down). Yeah, not so hip on the attentive listening.

It was interesting to me to see how I have changed as a parent over the past five years. When Christopher did his walking report card, I was so worried about everything and careful to do it all perfectly. I remember being concerned when we got to the part about whether they liked school or not and having Christopher write that he didn't like school. I was so concerned and didn't want him to choose that. I now know that little boys don't really like school, that is just they way it is. When Ethan chose that option, I just laughed and we moved on.

Matthew had his walking report card the next week. He to was quite speedy in his test. There was a whole section of Math that he needed more help on, and it turned out they hadn't gone over that section in class yet. But it frustrated me because he wouldn't double check his answers on anything. He just wanted to be done. I was in a wee bit of a hurry too, because I had to be back home to get to the temple dedication that afternoon.

I sometimes feel like our lives are just too rushed! I would've like to have had more time with Matthew that day. Everything always seems to fall on the same day.

But all in all, it was nice to spend that time with my boys and see their progress in school. We had Parent/Teacher Conferences at the end of March. All the boys are doing so well academically. I am really grateful for that. They are doing pretty well in all aspects really. They are quite well adjusted considering they live with me!