Out of the mouth of my babe

A few things Biscuit has said recently:


New words: Biscuit is doing really well with his reading. He seems to love words as much as Jeff and I do. I guess you'd say he got it honest.

Both of his teachers so far have said that word flash cards are really helpful. And me being the project-minded person I am, I got index cards and set to work.

I wrote all the ones on the kindergarten list, and then I thought I would add some words he would be interested in. I included ball, glove, catch, truck, tractor, sandwich, cookie and his favorite, the one that makes him giggle every time, quesadilla.

So when his first-grade teacher encouraged us to do the same thing with the first-grade word list, I made more cards.

I showed him the cards after I got them made, and there were three cards out of 50-something that he didn't already know. Honestly, I felt like I kind of wasted my time.

So I looked up the second-grade word list, just to see what kind of words it included. I called Biscuit over, and he started reading some of the words on the list. Since he already knows several of those words, I wondered if he might like having cards for those, too.

"Those words are from the second-grade word list," I told him.

"Really?" he said.

"Yep," I said. "Do you want to learn more of those?"

"Um, no thank you, Mom," Biscuit said.

I was surprised by his answer. He says all the time how much he loves learning new things.

"Why don't you want to learn more of them?" I asked.

"Well ... I'm just kind ... I mean ..." Biscuit said.

I realized then what the problem was.

"Dude! I don't mean learn them tonight!" I said.

"Oh!" Biscuit said, looking relieved. "Then yes, let's learn them. You know I love to learn."

Kids are just so literal!


New colors: I can't remember if I've mentioned this or not. My post-surgery time threw me off schedule with my blog post writing. But Biscuit's class is using a behavior color chart again this year. Each kid has a clothespin with his or her name written on it. All the clips start at green (ready to learn). But the weird thing is that this year, the chart is flipped completely upside down!

In kindergarten, the kids started in the middle at green. For good behavior, they could move up to yellow (good day), orange (great day) or red (outstanding day). Or they could go down to blue (think about it), purple (teacher's choice) or purple (parent contact). 

In first grade, it's just the opposite: They start on green, go up to blue, purple and pink or go down to yellow, orange or red.

So far, Biscuit's color have been mostly greens or blues. According to his teacher, he'll do something good and move up, then he'll start talking when he isn't supposed to and go back down.

On Friday, he couldn't wait to tell me how well he had done that day.

"Guess what color I got today, Mom?" Biscuit asked.

"Um ... yellow?" I asked.

"Mom! No! That's not a good color," he said, quite exasperated that I would start with a bad color.

"Well how 'bout you just tell me what you got," I said.

"I got pink!" he said with a huge grin.

"You did not!" I said, teasing him.

"Yes, I did," he said. "You can believe it because it's true!"

"How did you do it?" I asked.

"Mom, I was just breaking it down!" he said. "I decided that I would watch the other kids in class ... well the good ones, anyway. If they weren't talking, I didn't talk. And it worked."

"That's a very cool way to go about it," I said. "I'm proud of you for following the rules today."

I guess peer pressure isn't always a bad thing.