Report card time

The boys brought theirs home yesterday.  Both of them are doing well with a few surprises here & there.

The first was Mayhem. Mayhem claims he doesn’t like reading (my God! someone switched my baby in the hospital!) and appears to be incapable of realizing that the T H E on one page that he knows is “the” is the same as the T H E on the next page. But then he’ll start reading signs on the road while in the car for products we don’t see on TV “live nude girls”, “school bus crossing” etc. Mayhem is sneaky. He always has been. As an infant I would put him on his back on the floor, leave to get a drink and find him on his belly, and vice versa. But it was a month before any of us caught him in the act. I think he doesn’t like showing people while he is learning & some day I am going to look up and see him reading Anna Karenina instead of Cat in the Hat.  His report card bears this out.

They test them for emergent reading skills. Base line is 20 at the beginning of the year, with a goal of 165 at the end. Havoc scored 141 at the beginning of kindergarten, which I expected. Havoc loves to read. I assumed Mayhem would be somewhere in the 30-50 range given his randomness.  He scored a 101.  The little beggar can read & is hiding it. He recognizes all letters but lower case d, which, dude, is in his name!  His fine motor skills have improved greatly and he has apparently settled into the school routine nicely.  Except for when he makes a fuss about the teach watching him practice writing letters.

Havoc is doing very well, mastering his math and most of the reading skills. (they do mastered, making progress and needs improvement as grades) He is reluctant to guess at words he doesn’t know & take the time to sound them out. He wants to get on with the story & figures that one word doesn’t matter. So what if it is seizes, situation or sayings? Whichever one he guesses first is good enough, lets get one with it. The issues with Havoc seem to be more social. Havoc wants to be the class clown. Because the class work tends to come relatively easily to him he often gets done first and has time to get distracted and goof around. As his teacher puts it ‘he’s a social boy who enjoys talking & sharing his knowledge of many things. But can easily be redirected to his work’ Apparently he is also a ‘unique and most interesting’ boy.

Yeah. I’m not sure what to make of that.  It all reads very complimentary but I do wonder about the word choice of unique. Possibly given that our last name is practically the end of the alphabet she felt she was running out of personalizing adjectives by the time she got to Havoc.  Don’t get me wrong. I like that my kid is unique. But that word can go so many ways.

I guess I’ll find out at the conferences next week.  What do you think about unique?