Readers and writers

Things continue to go well with school for both boys. While we do have some concerns over the possibility that there is too much "teaching to the test" going on at Jamie's school, there is no question that he is learning a great deal and excelling. It shouldn't surprise us by now, but Jamie's reading has followed his usual pattern: just like he waited to walk until he could almost run, he took a long time to start reading but is now plowing ahead full steam. He's always been great with numbers but it's wonderful to see him working through some pretty advanced reading. It also makes sense in retrospect that he took a while to do it but now works really quickly, because while he can certainly sound some things out, he doesn't usually work that way. Rather he seems to read by word recognition and contextual interpretation. I think he's been storing this stuff up for the past 5 years and now has enough that he feels able to succeed. He does not like embarking on things with uncertain outcomes.

For his part Connor is proceeding by leaps and bounds this year and is now almost obsessively concerned with writing. He learns to write in cursive at school and can render his name wonderfully in cursive, but just lately almost anytime he is able to he grabs a pen and paper and starts writing block letters. Yesterday he was home sick from school and we spent an hour with him just writing each of our first names and last name (including Annabelle). Eventually I think he got tired and started to struggle a little. It's clearly an emotionally charged exercise because at some point he messed up the "b" in Annabelle, he just wailed "I can't do it!!!!!" and started bawling. In typical Connor fashion, too, sometimes he just decides to write an "E" as an "M". Don't be picky.