Yesterday, we had our first one since the Wooz graduated to Young Preschool. First off, you can tell DH and I are nerds, because we got the evaluation and before the teacher even opened her mouth, we were all slack-jawed and looking at each other like "WTF?"
Apparently this teacher does her evaluations completely differently than the previous teachers. All of the Wooz's previous evaluations have been (on a scale of 1 to 5) long strings of 4's and 5's with an occasional 3. This was like 80% 3's, with a handful of 4's and a handful of 2's. And she could tell we were freaking out (over a 3 year old's "academic" performance, so clearly we need a hobby), so she explained that her "goal" is for everyone to be at about a 3, and the skills they're still working on are 2's while the ones they excel at are 4's. I don't really agree with her philosophy, and would prefer to go back to teachers showering praise upon my kid (and our parental amazingness, by association), but at least I know enough to not worry about the numeric difference.
In a nutshell, it is fascinating to see which traits she's picking up from each of us. She's a perfectionist like DH--she can write her individual letters fine, but refuses to even attempt her name because "it's too long and I don't think I can do it all right." So we're working on that. She holds her scissors sideways, like she's in Menace II Society, so we're working on that, but she's pretty stubborn about it. When she does anything wrong, it eats at her for the rest of the day, even after everyone else has moved on. (That's me.) She was banned from the "big centers" for not cleaning up her toys one day, and the next day her teacher told her she could return and Wooz said no, she couldn't, because she didn't pick up her toys the day before, and all the while she was hanging her head in shame. Oh, and she got a 2 because she can't hop on one foot. (You should see her try though, it's awesome, like a drunk flamingo.) On the way home, I told DH that honestly, I don't think I could hop until I was in kindergarten, and to this day I can barely stand on one foot. (I was that spaz in the back of the yoga class who couldn't hold tree pose for more than a few seconds without listing to one side and awkwardly catching herself. Timber!)
Loves dramatic play, loves the science center, loves books, loves playing with other kids, articulate, great vocabulary, doing great with language arts, needs to practice her numbers (me, again), very creative with a great imagination. Oh, and very funny. I seriously cannot wait to see how she turns out as an adult.
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