The Zoo Follows Parent/Teacher Conferences...

Fall parent/teacher conferences were scheduled for Monday and Tuesday (Matt on Monday morning, Cathy on Tuesday) leaving us with two days off from school.  The conferences themselves weren't earth shattering, but I think we walked away from each with some really great information.

Matt, not surprisingly, still talks too much and too loudly.  But he's making great progress with both.  For the first time, he was asked to set goals before the conference and these became the basis for much of our discussion.  These goals centered around reading, writing, and math, each chosen specifically by Matt.  We talked about each goal and what Matt would need to do to achieve them.  If you've read Goodbye, Reading Club, you know that Matt's making fantastic progress in reading; with the gains in reading skills, writing is expected to follow suit (because for some reason, he wants to write about birds).  Already, he's spacing words, using sound spelling for words he doesn't yet know, he's mostly using correct letters (capital vs. lower case) and he's beginning to use punctuation in his writing.  

Math, it turns out, is Matt's area of strength.  His goal: to learn to tell time and to learn multiplication (something I remember really learning in the third grade, as songs set to Christmas tunes such as Frosty the Snowman's '5 ones are 5, 5 twos are 10', etc... if you went to St. Philip Neri with me, you'll probably remember this).  Later this year, a select group of kids will head off for math enrichment - stuff that is above and beyond the current curriculum - and Matt will be joining that group.

At Cathy's conference on Tuesday, we talked about how Cathy has been coming out of her shell.  On the very first day of school, I let her teacher, Mrs. Bruening, know that my little girl was nothing like her brother, that it would be work to get her to share things in class, and that was certainly the case.  She'll never be the kid who comes home with behavior warnings for talking in class, something Matt did more often than I would have liked.  She's a rule follower, through and through.

We were told that all the kids love Cathy, and for that I am so very grateful.  I've worried endlessly how Cathy would do with a new group of friends, especially when you consider that she's often a quiet child.  But socially, she's thriving.  I've had the chance to volunteer in Cathy's classroom and so I know that there are some really nice kids there... it's nice to be able to put a name with a face as Cathy starts to talk more and more about what she does in school each day.

Mrs. Bruening expressed concern over the way Cathy writes her letters, a concern I have shared and so I was glad she addressed it first.  Cathy can write most letters, at least as capitals, but her hand is sometimes shaky and that can make the letters somewhat indecipherable.  Mrs. Bruening asked if she could have the school's occupational therapist evaluate Cathy and I could not be happier about this.

When Cathy aged out of the birth to three Early Intervention program, we lost occupational therapy despite the efforts our therapist and I put into trying to keep it.  In the preschool program, the eligibility requirements are much different and the bottom line was that Cathy was never delayed enough to qualify.  We consistently asked our neurologist for prescriptions for OT services and he gladly wrote them, but living in Central PA, it was impossible to find a pediatric therapist taking private patients.  As part of the school system, Cathy will now have access to those types of services.  I'm already looking forward to the great progress I am sure she'll make with just a little extra attention.

Outside of that, Mrs. Bruening let us know that she'll have the reading specialist keep a close eye on Cathy and we shouldn't be surprised if Cathy finds her way into the kindergarten Reading Club come January (when the kids will be evaluated again with higher standards than in September).  Meantime, we'll work with Cathy on her writing skills and read and read and read with her to help her develop the skills she needs.  As I said the other day, my follow through is great as long as it's clear to me what I need to do to help the kids along.

After Tuesday's conference, with a pretty good weather forecast for mid-October, we piled in the car and traveled to the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium for the day... our third trip to Pittsburgh in the last few months (see Pittsburgh Children's Museum, PNC Park, and A Trip to Pittsburgh for Preseason Football).  

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so check out some of our pictures from the zoo...

Watching the Jaguar...

Love this... had us all looking up!

I could watch the Elephants all day

The Giraffes too

The kids crawling under the sting ray exhibit

Target feeding the sharks... more on this in a minute

Eating lollipops

Polar Bear (our kindergarten mascot)

One of the highlights of the trip, other than perfect temperatures and the spectacular colors of fall, came during our visit to the Aquarium.  We watched an employee feed one of the larger tanks of fish - as he climbed down the ladder, he told the kids that if they watched the ladder and made sure everyone stayed off it while he moved to another location to continue the feed, he'd show them something special.  

Included in our "special" behind the scenes tour of the aquarium, several tanks holding fish not yet ready to go out on display (including a male stingray, currently too small to be out with the older, larger women, that would eventually become part of what they hope will be a successful breeding program).  Next up, a trip upstairs and to the top of the largest tank - this is the one that holds the sharks.  We arrived in the middle of a target feed... in a target feed, an employee uses a yellow disk to attract the sharks.  When their nose touches the disk, they receive their food.  This becomes a very powerful tool in caring for the fish as they can easily track how much each fish eats; they also use this technique to monitor their health... for example, the fish will touch the disk, allowing staff to lift each shark out of the tank and weigh them.  We were told that the sharks are very tolerant of anything the staff wants to do simply because they've been conditioned to expect food at the end.

It was a very cool side trip, and something that we were very fortunate to have the opportunity to do.

We stayed at the zoo until closing time, grabbed dinner on the way out of town and arrived back home by 9:30pm.  It was a long day, but oh, so much fun... it reminded me of what was so great about my summer with the kids and it's so nice to know that just because school is back in session, there are still days to spend together and memories to make and share.