Jacob had a good day

Jacob had a very bad first quarter at Sutter. I must have wrongly assumed that he was mature enough to do his homework every night without my checking, and that he would stop talking in the classroom , especially during silent reading or when the teacher was talking! Well, after weeks of me getting on his case, he finally had his first perfect week last week! All assignments turned in, and not once getting in trouble for talking. For some reason, I thought he had his homework nailed down by fourth grade, but his talking was getting to be more of a problem as he got more and more comfortable at Sutter.

In light of all this, I was very happy yesterday to hear that Jacob won the classroom spelling bee. The last time he had won was in 2nd grade. In 1st grade, he didn't even get to the spelling bee because he was spacing out during the pretest and wrote "know" instead of "no", because he was eager to show off his spelling. In 3rd and 4th grade, he was nervous and made a mistake. This year, he finally took my advice to pretend to write the word on his hand before he speaks it. I told him he's very visual and a very good speller, so that technique works for him.

Also, he told me that at recess, he made two lay-ups. I'm so glad that he's been getting into basketball now that he's been watching the Warriors on TV . He's finally working on his basketball skills at school instead of playing handball!

Need to check Joanna's homework still....

Last week, Joanna's homework was to write a special note to a secret friend as a Christmas present. The "secret friend" was drawn out of the hat. As usual, I am supposed to look over her writing, but again, I forgot to double check her writing. After all, she did a very nice job coloring her paper and making an acrostic out of the secret friend's name.

Well, yesterday, I received a note from her teacher:
"Hi Elaine, I wanted to let you know that I am going to send Joanna’s letter home today and have her redo the assignment. This assignment was intended to give the students practice writing a friendly letter. This letter will be a gift for someone. Joanna is a strong writer and a kind person, but her letter does not really show her strengths. Her assignment was to write a letter to her person telling them what is great about that person, and why it is great to have them in class. Please reread her letter and have her redo it. Thank you,Christe Farnum"

Well, as soon as I went home I read her letter and was shocked and embarrassed. Here is what she wrote.

Dear Aryanna,

Your a good friend (well sort of a friend). When you're happy, I'm sort of happy. When you're sad, I'm sort of sad. When you laugh, I sort of laugh. When you leave early, I want to leave early. When I sed "when you laugh, I sort of laugh?" Well, it's not my fault! Whenever anyone laughs , I laugh.

Sincerely, Joanna


Well, I was really embarassed, that I let Joanna turn that in. Miss Farnum must think I am a monster! What a terrible mom, that I am.

When I complained to Joanna that she didn't do a good job on her letter. She said, "I know, I didn't spell "said" correctly."