Partent-Teacher School Conferences

I think it's important to be involved in my kids education. Besides reviewing their work on the nights that they are with me, another thing I always do is to attend their school conferences.

Conferences were scheduled for last night for first grader "Rae" and fourth grader "Bess". Both girls are doing great in school and this was more of a way for me to meet their teachers and help them to understand more about the girls than a time to express any concerns.

Rae is reading very well, much better than last year, and her teacher says that her ability in math is outstanding. She does have to work on staying on task and not daydreaming.

Bess is also doing great. She is concerned that her time away from class for her ABLE or advanced classes is causing her to fall behind in social studies and science. Her teacher believes she is doing fine in these subjects but agreed to give her a little extra attention in these subjects when she returns from her advanced classes.

"Levi" didn't have conferences as he is at a different school. He did try out for a travelling basketball team on Monday and Tuesday and he was not selected, so he was a little bothered by that.

Because of the tryouts, I didn't get the kids on my usual Tuesday night. Because of the conferences, if I would have brought them to our house last night we wouldn't have gotten home until almost 9 PM, just in time to go to bed and get up early the next day for the ride back to their mom's. So I decided it was in their best interest to just spend some time with be before conferences and then head back to their mom's for the night.

I picked them up at 5:30, we had dinner at Bob Evans, and then I took them back to their mom's before my first conference at 6:45.

Weeknight With Dad

I had my kids overnight on Tuesday. This was our first weeknight since school started 2 weeks ago. School started on a Tuesday and then the next week was Labor Day. Since both of those weeks were 4-day weeks, I agreed to have the kids on Sunday night (not a school night) as my overnight.

So I left work at 4 PM for the 1 1/2 hour commute to my kids' mom's home. I got there right at 5:30, and my cell phone rang. Their mom was calling to say she was just leaving work to get the kids. It's a long confusing story but apparently they were supposed to be home with a sitter but the storm door was locked so they couldn't get in. They finally arrived about 5:45.

I quickly got the kids and their backpacks into the car and we were on our way. We had soccer practice at 6:30 and we were a little late. Also, on our way, their mom called to tell me that Rae had left her blue folder in the backseat of her mom's car, it wasn't in her backpack.

So then after soccer, we went home and I heated them up some dinner while Levi & Bess did their homework and all of them got showers. We had macaroni & cheese, hot dogs, chicken tenders, & garlic toast. And some delicious chocolate pie for dessert. Rae told me she didn't have any homework and her mother had her folder so I didn't check her backpack. Mistake!

It was nearing 10 PM when I got them all tucked into bed.

I got up at 6AM and got myself around and dressed. I got the girls up at 6:30 and Levi at 6:45. Their mother had said for them to be ready at 7:15 AM. They all got up, got dressed, and had breakfast. Rae then went to put her lunch in her backpack and showed me her red folder, which had some math homework in it. Oops!

The homework involved cutting and pasting numbers so of course we didn't have time to get it done. Their mom arrived around 7:30 to pick them up. I explained the situation but she must not have understood because she left and then came back to tell me that she would be sure to tell the teacher it was my fault that Rae didn't finish her homework.

I had already planned to email the teacher to explain the confusion and to let her know that I would make sure to check Rae's backpack in the future, regardless of what Rae or her mother told me.

Baby brother Gabe did wake up just before they left, and they were all 3 happy to see him, as they hadn't seen him in over a week.

Levi Finishes 2nd In County Spelling Bee Due To Manure

My son Levi represented his school today in the county spelling bee. He did a great job, finishing in 2nd place overall out of 26 4th graders. Levi correctly spelled well over a dozen words, including "examples", "probably", and "graffiti" before misspelling "manure." He spelled it "manuer."

This is humorous as Levi comes from a dairy farming heritage, his grandfather worked a large dairy farm which 2 of his uncles still run.

Levi also comes from a great spelling heritage, with several uncles, aunts, and his father having participated in this same county spelling bee. One of the first, uncle Dick, missed the word "license." Levi's grandmother has made it her duty to make sure that whenever another of her kids or grandkids enter a spell-down, they know how to spell "license" if nothing else.

Likewise I made sure he would not miss the first word I ever missed in the county spelling bee, "buried." I clearly remember several other students missing it by starting with "ba" or "be" or even using a "y", but I misspelled it with 2 r's, "burried."

Levi's accomplishment today was much better than my best showing, I don't recall ever even making the top 10.

Many of the most challenging words today were compound words where the kids had to decide if it was a single word, 2 words, or a hyphenated word: "slam-dunked", "air conditioning", "flagpole", "eyesore", and "old-fashioned" were among the tricky words. The hardest word I heard was "Peace Corps" but Levi said he would have gotten that one correct.

Great job Levi!