The last.....

photo of 6year old Katie. Such an excited little girl for her birthday tomorrow. She's excited that she gets to go to school with a badge, that she gets to dance on her birthday, that she's having "worm bun" hair, that I'm going for lunch, that Friday is a "two musics" day. That she'll get presents barely gets mentioned. She said to me the other day "I didn't even think of something I wanted. Maybe pink things. Just pink stuff. That's good". 

Parents' evening tonight. Really proud of her. Her teacher said she's settled fantastically into y2, that some children find it a hard transition but that she has stepped up to it and is doing great. "You're happy, you enjoy school and seem to have lots of friends. You know the difference between what we want of you when you're out in the playground and when you come back in you're ready to work hard". Her teacher asked her whether she wanted to talk about her maths, her writing or her reading first. She chose maths. He asked if that was because its her favourite. She screwed her face up and shook her head up. He said "I don't think you know how good at maths you are. You're really good at it but don't seem to believe it". He's spot on. He said of her reading "What can I say, you can read, you're doing brilliantly. So go and read all that you can". We had a little chat about school reading, though it still feels like we're not making a massive in road into that. He apologised to Katie for forgetting to show her where his collection of free readers are and that she can have as many of those as she wants. He said her writing is wonderful and that every time she writes she puts an awful lot of thought and effort into it, that he loves that he can read her work and know for sure that she wrote it because she puts her personality into her writing. He said he thinks she's a perfectionist who likes things to be right. He's got her sussed. We had a chat about handwriting & he didn't realise that the PPA cover were making her do the very basic "join a to i" practises and such. He didn't realise all that was in place with her writing last year, I had taken her writing folder to show him as I suspected that was the case. He was quite surprised and is going to reinstate some of the extended writing pieces in place of the basic handwriting exercises. We also reached a compromise about her "Monkey-tail" y, g, f (the school KS1 policy doesn't allow children to join them, its not taught until KS2 but she always has, very neatly & efficiently yet has been told off repeatedly this year for doing it, even though she's writing at y4 standard). Her work was wonderful to see. She's definitely embracing the step up. And I definitely see a lot of progress already this half term. Her art sketch book surprised me. She tells me she can't draw but there were some lovely examples of shading, texture & accurate representations. She's doing really well in y2. Good job, BabyGirl. 

She had fun at dance class tonight. She's very bouncy about the fact she'll be there for her birthday. She was really excited to get her yellow leotard for panto rehearsals and that the DVDs of the show have been given out. She was nearly asleep on the way home tonight. I had to pack her up in to bed quite quickly as there were some preparations to make ready for a certain special day  tomorrow. Can't wait to see her face!! 

No more 6 year old cuddles for me. It makes me a little sad. I think I might just sneak in and go get me another one before it turns midnight....