Parent Teacher Conferences

I know, no parents, no teachers. What does this have to do with a parent-teacher Conference. I don't even really think these pictures do justice to a fun morning. The 2 day holiday that is called parent/teacher Conferences was a novella for us. New, and also a short novel or a long story. Sigh. I scheduled them, one with Elise's main teacher, same for Sennia, 2 of Alena's classes she isn't doing as well as she'd like in (although she's doing exceptionally in all) and the interesting set up for middle school where you sign up for a 2 hr block and then jump in and out of teacher's waiting rooms. I concentrated it into an evening and left the rest of the time for spending with my kids. Definitely don't get enough of this these days. For the record book, all the teachers I spoke to had wonderful things to say about my children. Elise struggles with some reading and some of the math but nothing that worries me. The other 3 got comments like "...is really solid in math" or my best math student in Alena's case. Yep, Alena. Alena's teachers had rave reviews of her writing skills, pretty much everything. She could contribute more to the class. That is her goal. Sennia is a model student in every way. Brigham is smart, finishes everything quickly. But here I will stop. Here there are tears. Here I must confront what I hate about the curriculum.  Here I find out Brigham is not loving school the way I thought and actually prefers homeschool. Here I see his eye tear up because they make him write about EVERYTHING. I listen to teachers tell me what they're asking him to do-that he's doing mind you. No complaints from his teachers but it was there. In the air. In his eyes. They make him write about every step in his math problems. They make him write down his thoughts as he reads: when you notice a plot change, when you notice . . . Here is where I say, to school or not to school. THAT is the question. I might not have stopped crying and maybe can't sleep. I do know that my kid is not a crucible. I do know that nobody will kill his love for learning under my watch.

So, we went to the beach. We're digging hard to find friends. My kids enjoy these neighbors, the Robert's family. It was a quiet group but they had fun discovering. 

We also went with the Bywater's from the ward and the little girls had a beautiful time. It made my heart so happy. We look forward to hanging out with them in the future.