Adjusting to First Grade

Gosh, been ages since I posted!

Life has been busy.

We are getting used to being back in school.

Beanie loves being in 1st Grade. She adores her teacher and has two of her besties in her class so she is excited to go to school each day. She is doing well. Her reading is improving by leaps and bounds, so much that she now seeks books to read and can read independently. She has already completed her 100 First Grade Sight/Fry words and is  now working on the Second Grade set of words. She scored well in her beginning of year assessment for math and reading and was recommended Enrichment in Math.

Next week they have the CogAT test for gifted students. Everyone takes it, apparently. I got her a study guide last weekend, so we are practicing a few pages each day, mainly to give her some familiarity with the questions. I am not stressing about how she does on it. As long as she is keeping up in class, I am happy, and it seems she is doing pretty good. Her first PT meeting is on Oct 9th and I am looking forward to it.

Her teacher has a program called Dojo that they get each day. Beanie is always making the daily goal and I am happy to see her getting Dojo's for being Respectful, Listening, Persistence, Being Kind, and On Task!

Our evenings are really busy. I get done with work around 6pm. My company is in CA so that is the busiest time of my day. Beanie does not get homework per se, but she does have reading to do daily, sight words, and some math workbook pages per week. I also have her do a bit of math each day. She still gets some numbers wrong - facing the other way - so the key is to practice. It is usually while I am cooking dinner at 6pm,  I will give her random number to write as a way to practice her numbers, or she will read a book while sitting on the kitchen counter. 

With dinner to be cooked, eaten, kitchen cleaned, lunch packed, bath etc, there is almost no Mommy-Sabi playtime if she needs to be in bed by 8pm.  If there is time, it is usually only 10-15  min which is not enough and we end up with a meltdown. That has been causing me a lot of stress, so I have decided to push her bedtime back about 15 min if needed. She seems to be doing okay with that and it gives us some special time which I think she really enjoys. It also makes me less stressed which I think makes her more relaxed too. Also, I have decided to not clean the kitchen right after dinner and to do it after she sleeps, saving me 15 min or more. That would seem the most logical choice, except she likes me to be in the room with her (!).  So we are still figuring out the sweet spot in terms of timing everything.

We had a fun weekend.

On Friday they had a Back To School bash. Then yesterday we went to a local Fall Festival. Beanie bought some doll clothes, doll blanket and an amethyst crystal. I bough a cute Halloween decoration and a Tree Person face. I have seen those on some trees and they are so funny. We have a pine tree in our back yard that we can see from the kitchen, It will be fun to put it on there - the eyes, nose and mouth. I will likely need my yard guy to put those on the tree. Today we stayed home in the morning and did out Fall decorations. Then at 2pm, she had a play date a at her best friend's house. The girls put up a play and we had dinner with the family. It was nice.

The last few weeks I have been battling some shoulder/neck issues The same thing that happened in 2016,, 2017 and earlier this year. I was in a lot of pain, popping pills, muscle relaxants etc. I started mt PT exercises at home and finally a week or so in I went to the chiro. I feel a lot better now, but I need to keep regular with mt exercises.