Week in the life

I keep telling myself I need to blog. I walk around 'blogging' in my head all day and then I never find the time or make the time to come sit down and actually do it. I have all kinds of things running through my head, sometimes it's quite overwhelming when I want to let it all out.
Anyway, first things first. Thanks to Beth and Nicole for inviting me and our online buddies to do another Week in the Life project. I had so much fun doing it last year so I'm glad to be doing it again. I'm fining that so many of the pictures are very similar though. I guess I do the same kind of things still. Haha! Here are a couple favorites from the past few days:






This last one is of Jake doing his homework. I can not get over the difference between Kindergarten and 1st grade. I mean, I expected it to be more work and of course harder.....but this hard??? He's doing well except in reading/spelling. But um...the spelling words he has?! Oh my goodness. Last week they were who what when where why how find... The whole W-H thing really confused him but he didn't do too bad with those. But then this week the words are ate eight flour flower hole whole meat meet no know. I'm sorry, but those words are extremely difficult for a 6 year old who learned everything phonetically in Kindergarten. E-I-G-H-T???? That's like impossible to sound out. The kid can sound out things really well. He surprises me sometimes with the things he can spell when he really tries. But getting him to understand why e-i-g-h-t spells 8..... dude, I don't even know. I'm glad they're not doing super simple stuff, but besides being homonyms, these words are like totally random. What happened to learning why things are spelled certain ways? Like putting an E on the end of a word makes the vowel a long sound? Short vowel? Long vowel? Consonant clusters: ch, sh ph even??? I actually looked up the curriculum the school district says it uses for language arts. There is a 24 page list of spelling words for the first grade. I printed it out and went through the entire thing and only found a few words that he's actually had as spelling words and all the others are no where to be found. I even looked on the 2nd grade curriculum (because he's in a 1st/2nd combo class) and they weren't even on that list. Where is she pulling these words from?? My niece is in 2nd grade (at the same school) and her words haven't even been that hard. Hers have been like: from, hand, friend how, stand. Um, those are pretty easy. I'm not one of these parents that thinks I'm better than the teacher, or that I know more than she does. I DO NOT. But I just do not understand how I'm supposed to help him be successful if the things that are asked of him seem so far out of his reach. Last week with the who what when where why words....I was practically in tears. He doesn't seem frustrated at all. But me...I knew he just wasn't getting it. Plus, he had to learn those words in 3 days since it was a short week. (The teachers had a staff day on Friday) I mean, that's like setting them up for failure.
I know what you're thinking: Talk to the teacher!!
I have. Well sort of. I wrote her a note on Monday stating that I'd like to talk to her one on one. She did write me back stating she would call me sometime this week. I'm trying to give her the opportunity to follow through. I haven't heard anything yet. If I don't hear from her by tomorrow, I will be going in unannounced. And if that doesn't work, I will be going to the principal. I'm not the only parent who feels this way. There are only 8 1st grade students in his class and I'm pretty friendly with most of them and it seems we all seem to be having the same issues. Something just isn't right.
Whew. I'm glad I got all that off my chest. I've literally lost sleep over this. Ridiculous, I know.
In other news, Pete, Megan and I are all sick. We've all got colds and have felt pretty crappy all week. I made us all home made chicken soup last night for dinner, hoping that it would make us feel better. We're supposed to be headed out to Santa Cruz tomorrow to spend the weekend with my dad at the beach house they've rented. We are all super excited. I just hope we feel better tomorrow! I think we're on the mend though. I'm not missing out on a weekend at the beach!