It's been awhile! I may never catch up. I will keep trying, but today I decided it would be a good day to do a post about the current school year. A little update on how my kids are doing at this stage now that the 2020-2021 school year is almost over.
Kylee is in 9th grade. High school! I will get into soccer stuff another time, but she played for Hillcrest and had a lot of fun. She is taking Honors English this year. I am proud of her because this is not an easy class! She has received all A's so far this year (knock on wood). After the first trimester, her English teacher sent out an email explaining that the intensity of the class will continue to increase and some students that usually get A's might get B's, etc. A friend of mine texted me, all worried, asking if I was okay with Kylee getting a B. I said, "no, but I have faith she can do well." And she did. She likes reading and she does well. They read The Count of Monte Cristo, though it was an abridged version thank goodness (actually my friend Julie said her son didn't get an abridged version, I guess there weren't enough of them, so he had to read the whole thing!) She took detailed notes, read ahead most of the time, and did really well. They had a pretty big assignment after they read it, some big essay that was a big part of their grade. But she did well enough to get an A in the class. Her teacher sent me an email this week, since it's PTC time but they don't let us come in and meet with them anymore. Only if there is a problem we need to discuss, we are supposed to contact them. I haven't heard from many of Kylee's teachers this year. But her honors teacher sent me an email that was really nice. She said, "I just wanted to take a moment to tell you how much I have enjoyed having Kylee in my class this year. She is consistent, she is helpful, and she is kind. She works hard, she performs well, and she asks for help when she gets confused. She's just an all around great kid. Thank you so much for all of the hard work you have put in to help this awesome kid thrive here at Hillcrest. I look forward to seeing her in my college writing class in the future." Sweet huh? It's not unusual to hear these things about Kylee. It is so nice that she stays on top of her work, rarely has much homework, and I just don't have to worry about her. Pretty soon we will be getting her ready to take the ACT.
She occasionally hangs out with friends, but isn't really a party animal yet. If she does go out, it's usually with Kylie Paskett (who is very social and has lots of friends from IF high school). I would say she's a bit of an introvert. She will be getting her license very soon so then if she wants to be social it will be a lot easier on me, lol. Anyway, Kylee is wonderful as usual. For the record, she is 5'9" now.
Dylan started Sandcreek, 7th grade this year. It's been fun watching him become very independent, start to wear jeans, change up his hair, care that his clothes are clean and not wrinkled (he's getting a bit neurotic about some of this though). But he's so responsible. There are times when I have to ask him about homework and help him with math. But he stays on top of things mostly. He gets his Monday online work done early in the morning. He missed the first week of school due to illness. After a few weeks I found out that they had split the kids into a "high" math class and Dylan wasn't in it. I was pretty surprised. I reached out to his counselor and she confirmed they had split the classes according to their STAR test, but I assumed they took that test when Dylan was absent and so he was missed. I'm not sure if that is what happened or not, but she looked at his previous tests and said he was definitely qualified to be in the upper class. Dylan wasn't thrilled, he thought it meant more work. But ultimately he was happy with the change. He had a lot of friends in the higher class. Dylan has received a couple B's this year. We are trying to convince him to see himself as an A student. I think he feels a bit of pressure, like we expect too much. He hears kids at school talk about their grades and he feels like he's doing pretty darn good. But I know he can keep A's. And if he tries really hard and he still ends up with B's, that is fine too. I just want him to shoot for A's.
He joined the game club and the walking club during lunch. He plays poker and blackjack in the game club. He walked around the track, mostly ran actually. They got prizes or tickets for how many laps they did. This was all first trimester, during winter they no longer did it. Dylan talks about a lot of friends at school, and has gotten together with some of them. He is happy. He started track and outdoor soccer so he is quite busy and overextended at times. It makes him a bit moody, but he likes it so he's happy. For the record, he is not yet taller than me. I've got at least an inch, maybe 1.5 on him.
Sadie is in 4th grade. School is easy for her and she brings home nothing but perfect scores. Okay, it's possible she has lost a point here or there. But really, she's brilliant and her teacher loves her. He's not the only one. She was asked to join HOPE Squad at school. This is a group designed to help everyone at school feel seen and valued. They sent out a survey early in the year asking the students to list kids who they feel comfortable, friendly with, someone who they trust with their secrets. I was told that Sadie's name came up a LOT. I'm not really surprised. She is a fun-loving, happy girl. This year has been interesting because she's gotten attention from some boys. She's adorable! And smart and fun. Of course people love her. But it's been weird. Kylee said, "she's going to be a lot more popular than me when she's older... She's texting boys!" But she has no romantic interest in these boys. They have fun teasing each other and they are friendly. She was tested for GATE and we will see the results some time soon. She would've been tested last year but Covid is lame. It will be fun if she gets to go. She's not sure she wants to. But we will see.
Kaden started Kindergarten. His teacher is amazing and she has been so great with him. It's been a wonderful year. She immediately started sending home books that are his level. I remember with my other kids we had to suffer through really easy, stupid books that were a waste of their time. Kaden passed off his sight words right away and she gave him first grade words. Once he passed off those, she started him on spelling. He learned to spell all the kindergarten sight words. I had never done spelling with my kindergarteners so I wasn't sure how it would go. But he did so well. The color words and the number words took a little longer, and once we finished I thought he would be done. But she started sending him "challenge" spelling words. And they were really hard! Antarctica. Penguin. Days of the week. Easter, oviparous, butterfly, etc. He does surprisingly well. He's so dang smart. Do I sound like a broken record yet? My kids are so freaking awesome! Kaden used to whine about writing. But his teacher insisted he write things about all the books he read. She also had him take the STAR test and started sending him books in in reading level (mostly 2nd grade books). They are always perfect for him. Just challenging enough. She also started him taking AR tests. None of my kids have been able to take AR tests in kindergarten! I remember trying with Sadie and her teacher couldn't get it to work I guess. He also love math. He loves talking about numbers. We found out the biggest known number is googlplex. It's a 10 to the googl power. Googl is 10 to the 100th power. I know not everyone is fascinated by numbers though. He gets challenge math pages every month. They are problems that make him think. Some of them seem over his head. Some too easy. He's starting to learn fractions, just the very basics. I want to teach him multiplication tables. And states and capitals. He knows all the western states because he was around when I was reviewing them with Dylan and Sadie. Anyway, he's pretty amazing.
Socially, he's pretty cute. He has lots of little friends. He asks me to invite these girls over sometimes. It's been a little while now, I think he realized that not everyone likes to play the same things he likes to play so he's been a little more selective with who he wants to play with. He started riding his bike home from school all by himself this trimester. He still asks me to drive him to school sometimes because he's tired in the mornings and he says it's cold. But I am all about raising tough kids. That being said, on crappy weather days I obviously drive him and pick him up. He's very independent and very much a people-pleaser. He reminds me a lot of Kylee when she was young. He gets anxiety sometimes. Like when we were late for school because we needed to go get our passport paperwork sent off. He kept asking me if I told his teacher he would be late and he was all worried about the work he would miss. It was cute. I was like, I really think the work they do will be way easy for you and not hard to make up. Very recently he started creating things with Perler Beads. He's growing up so much!! He also pulled out two teeth in the last week. He says he has now lost eight teeth total. His one front tooth is still not coming in and it's stressing me out. Its been almost a year since we pulled the dead one out. He lost the other front tooth awhile after that and that one has grown in quite a bit. Now he's lost the teeth on either side of those front ones and that one front tooth is the only one there! It makes it a bit hard to bite.
Shortly after this picture, we started styling his hair a little. Just a little swoosh to the side. He looks so handsome and mature! He seems tall to me, but I don't think he's much taller than average. He loved playing basketball and we hope he will be a golfer too. Everything his Dad has dreamed of, lol.
If I sat down and blogged more regularly I'm sure there would be more things I could write. Hopefully my memory will be sparked as I go through and try to catch up on some blogging at some point. Life is just busy! I should've been doing it while it was cold out. Now I'm going to be outside in my garden a lot and then the kids will be out of school and busy again. But I'm sure I can find some time if I try hard.
