GARDENING AND THE GREAT JAMES

Jay and Cora spent some time after dance class prepping the garden for winter veggies and planting seeds. This season we're going to try broccoli (our favorite veggie), lettuce, and spinach. We got very few tomatoes this summer, even fewer snap peas, and our carrots and potatoes were ridiculously tiny. The only thing that thrived were the cucumbers (and they sure created a lot of foliage to clear out before we could rotate the garden), and most of them were too big and bitter to eat. Fingers crossed we'll at least get good results from one out of three of the new plantings!

Just look at that smile! She was so happy and proud to be helping daddy!

 While daddy and Cora worked, James mostly entertained me inside the house (I was making dinner), but when he noticed Cora moving on to chalk drawings, he had to go out and join her. He's not into yard work much. Kinda like his mama...

 

James got some GREAT news today and he was SO VERY PROUD to go through his folders with me after school and tell me all about it! After being on RED the past two days (why oh why are we back to this again?!), he came home with PURPLE today! He also had a 100% score on his AR test to show me (get excited folks, that's a big deal! most kids in his class aren't even taking the tests yet because they aren't ready), as well as his first set of "graded" papers that were all scored with 3's and 4's (a new, non-graded system his school is using this year, where 3's basically mean he's right on target/meeting expectations for his age/grade and 4's mean he's exceeding those expectations). This was his second AR test, and the first one did not go nearly so well. He knew the book by heart and could easily answer any question we threw at him, but we think he just needed to get used to taking tests on the computer (they never did that at Agape, and we just started letting him play on the laptop at home when school started. Jay has been practicing with him by writing out questions for him to read and answer (fill in the blank or multiple choice) on the computer, so I know that helped. We also had him go over this book for 3 days rather than 2 before signing off for him to take the test, so the extra repetition likely helped as well. It seems the AR tests are like a book report (without the essay writing, of course) to ensure the kids are paying attention to the story and can recall details, but they also test reading skills by forcing the kids to read and answer the questions completely on their own (so, the more familiar they are with their book and the specific words that are perhaps a little harder to decipher, the better chance they have of answering their exam questions correctly). We're super proud of him (and looking forward to seeing the actual progress reports that will come home next week, not to mention the STAR exam results that we're still waiting on). James will have to keep working on his behavior, but he's handling his academics beautifully!