Such an exciting day....

I'm just blogging my little heart out today! So, so much excitement....or crying....that's the same, right?

So, Ari has not had homework yet this year. Melodie had homework when she was in kindergarten, every night. Tonight, they sent home a word ring (a metal ring with paper words looped on it, I know, very original name) to go over and a piece of lined paper to practice name writing. The word ring did not go over so well. She can read red, green, and yellow. The rest of them, she guessed until she got the right color. I will say 2 weeks ago when she brought home her weekly classroom report and it said they learned to spell red, and I asked her and she did it, I cried. I know, it's a 3 letter word, and they made up a cutesy little song to teach them, but she spelled red. That was the first word, other than her name, that she ever spelled! They were tears of being proud, but they were also tears of sadness. Not for my baby growing up (because I'm very proud of her and how responsible she has become) but because I didn't feel like I did a good job teaching her because she couldn't read. Melodie could read chapter books when she started kindergarten. Ari couldn't even read "red." Granted, she's not always the most cooperative child, but I spent so many hours teaching Melodie how to read and write and count, even in different languages, but poor little Ari couldn't even spell red when she went. I know I only had Melodie to take care of when she was a toddler, and with Ari not only did I still have Melodie, plus her, but also Atley to take care of, so it wasn't humanly possible to spend the same amount of time with her, but I felt I failed her as a parent. I know she doesn't have to read before kindergarten, because that's sort of the purpose of kindergarten, and if she's not the top student in her class, that doesn't mean anything to me(trust me, an average, not gifted, run of the mill, normal, plain old kid is fine by me!) , but did I give her a good enough foundation to build on?

Now, Ari has been writing "ARI" for a couple years. We started working on "Ari" right before school. School wants her to write Arianna. She writes Ari (with a circle over the "i") and the rest is blobs and lines because she doesn't think she should have to write it, especially not more than once a day. God forbid I ask her to write it the 5 times they requested she practice it tonight, on top of her being upset she couldn't read all of the color words! Her wrath was felt, and it was not pretty!