About the Weather

Kiernan has been telling me, on the way to school and during our dinner "How Was Your Day" conversations, that in school he has been learning about the seasons. The above image is schoolwork proof that this is true.

For those of you not familiar with the penmanship of four-year-olds and not used to decyphering inventive spelling, allow me to provide a translation of the above answer, written in Kiernan's own hand (as you can probably ascertain, from the signature below the answer).

In answer to the query, "What is your favorite type of weather?", Kiernan writes,

"Hot and sunny, because it is warm."

I am particularly enamored of this little example of Kiernan's work because it means his teachers are listening to us. In our parent teacher conference at the end of last semester, we mentioned that we want to be sure Kiernan is continually being challenged. He is doing great in school socially, but we weren't certain his teachers were really assessing all he could already do. His teachers are great, incidentally; we like them a great deal. And we don't want to push him unduly, of course--he's only four for goodness sake--but I don't want him getting bored either. This is his second year in this preschool class, so he has seen a lot of the things they do in there before. Two things today showed me that his teachers are taking our concerns to heart, and this pleases me a great deal.

First, when I dropped him off this morning he asked me to read him a book before I left. Since we were the first ones there, I hung around for a bit and read to him. He had asked me about a word from a particular book the day before while we were driving home, so he showed me that book and we talked about that word. As we did, Teacher Stephanie said to me, "Did he tell you he read that book himself yesterday?"

Supercool. I was happy to see them recognizing his interest in, and capacity for, reading.

Second, of course, is captured in the above image. Usually the teachers would just get him to dictate his answer. I am very happy they got him to write it himself this time.

Well, he's calling me--"Dadddddeeeee...I'm done with my naaaaaaap!"--so that's all for now.