Parent Teacher Conference

Today we met with Annie's teacher Ms. Susie for her parent-teacher conferences. Apparently Annie is doing great in her new class (last month she moved up a level at her Montessori school), she's made a lot of new friends (except Paigie is not her friend - she is the bug-eyed chick who kept biting Annie when they were in Ms. Pearls class together). She knows all of her main colors but she can't always tell the difference between black and brown, weird. She can count consistently up to 20 and consistently skips the number 15. She really enjoys coloring and in fact everyday after finishing her breakfast will tell the teacher that they need more paper. One thing I was surprised to hear is that Annie is starting to learn how to read. I had asked about learning the letters of the alphabet and Ms. Susie said she doesn't teach letters. I guess they start with one set of sounds and the associated symbol (like it's not the letter F, it's the sound "ffff") and she has a box of little objects, like a toy fish. The kids have to match the first sound of the object to the sound card "fff'" which has the symbol F on it. And then eventually in a few months Annie will move onto the last sound fish makes and pick the SH (or "shhh") card, and then for some reason they learn to find the middle sound last. So hopefully by the middle of summer Annie will be sounding out F-I-SH all on her own! Crazy! Now if we can only get her to put her shoes on the right feet, she will be set.