Third Grade

Just one more day to go due to having to make up for a snow day, but basically school is over. Elizabeth is nervous about fourth grade, just as she was going into third grade. She does not recognize her abilities and how well she performs. She came home Wednesday with a medal for the number of AR points she had accumulated over the year, a certificate for outstanding attendance, and 2 certificates for excellence in reading -- one from the State Superintendent and one from the School District. The truth is she has done outstanding in ALL her classes and had straight A's in all classes all year -- actually A+'s if they graded that way! I think back to where she started from and it still amazes me how quickly and easily she has gotten to this point. If only she could see it too! She told me that they did her ELL testing a few weeks ago and I look forward to getting those results early next school year. Even though she is not receiving ELL tutoring, she is still considered to be in the ELL program and is retested yearly to monitor her progress. The last time she was tested it still showed she lagged behind in full comprehension of English but that she was progressing. This is consistent with her day to day functioning in language. Her accent is gone and to listen to her you would never guess she has not spoken English since "birth", but once you talk to her for a while you can notice the lag in comprehension, especially when the concept is new to her.
I am anxious to see how she does in fourth grade as it is such a transition year and the year that each of the other kids showed the most difficulty with. Moore Schools are also very progressive and start the kids transitioning to different teachers for different subjects in 4th grade which adds to the challenges.
School starts back August 13th -- earlier and earlier every year!

Latest Update

I went to Elizabeth's parent teacher conference last Thursday afternoon. Elizabeth is doing very well in 3rd grade. She has straight A's! She is learning cursive handwriting and her handwriting is beautiful. She still gets discouraged and feels she is not doing as well as she is and neither her teacher or I am sure how to get her to see that it isn't so.
The only "negative" is that Elizabeth likes to be a mother hen and is more worried about what others are doing instead of what she is supposed to be doing.

The Talker

It has been a while since I updated Elizabeth's blog. Elizabeth is getting behavior marks in school for talking too much. She reminds me a lot of Stephen. She is not hyperactive, but she is smart and likes to help the other kids around her. The problem is she winds up not doing her own work. Taking privileges away at home for the behavior marks is not working so I have asked her teacher to move her to sit by herself so she can't talk. I am hoping this will only be a short lived intervention to get her attention and help her to understand that there is a time to talk and a time to do her work!
I am trying to decide what to do with Elizabeth's hair. I have been letting it grow out but it is SO thick that it is hard to manage. She wanted it in a ponytail last weekend and I could hardly get my hand around the ponytail! Any ideas are welcome,

New Year

It is a new year and although it is already a couple of weeks into the year we started out by clearing out the old and no longer played with toys in Elizabeth's closet. We have 4 garbage bags of toys to go to Goodwill plus several toys that are too big to fit in bags. The closet is now organized and hopefully will stay that way for a while.

Teeth

I was looking at the picture above and thought I would comment about Elizabeth's teeth. When she came home almost all of her teeth were silver caps. Our dentist commented on what a good job was done on them. She also has one spacer. The dentist suspected that her teeth were rotten from poor nutrition. As her baby teeth started falling out and her permanent teeth started coming in we noted major crowding and the dentist noted that the enamel on her permanent teeth is also very weak. For that reason he does not recommend she ever be placed in braces as the likelihood that her permanent teeth would be damaged is high. Her mouth has spread some from when her permanent teeth first started coming in but we are not sure how much more it will do so. Either way, she still has a beautiful smile!

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of Elizabeth's favorite holidays. Most would think it would be Christmas, but not Elizabeth. I believe I know why too -- FOOD! Elizabeth still has issues with food. She will literally eat until she is sick. At first we let her eat as much as she wanted but after 3 years of that we started limiting the amounts, especially when she was getting sick. The rule was that I started her out with a VERY generous portion given her age. If she started eating it too fast the meal was over. She usually did this so she could get seconds before anyone else just in case there was none left over (which is rare). By doing this she started being able to feel when she was full and not finishing her generous portions and no more getting sick. I started easing up on these tactics when I thought she had improved but watching her eat today it is obvious this may be an ongoing problem. She was eating with both hands and would have kept going if I had not stopped her. As soon as dinner was over she was obsessed with pies and dessert. It is still much better than how she ate at first, but we still have some work to do.

Merry Christmas

Well not quite yet, but we had our Christmas pictures taken today.