parent teacher conference

Yesterday was parent- teacher conferences at Kellen's school. We loaded up and went to the school, sat outside the class room till it was our turn. I had books, crayons, leapster, and  various paraphernalia to entertain munchkins while I talked with Kellen's teacher. Of course, they had to get some attention for themselves, but eventually we settled in okay. She showed me a couple of tests- both 100%- and said there wasn't much to say about that. He's academically very successful. He's already passed the reading level where they want them to be at the end of first grade. She wisely recognizes that he needs to be with his peers to work on the social graces, so he's in a reading group with other good readers, rather than moving on to other reading material.
His writing is his weakest point right now. She only gave him two "meets" and two "exceeds", instead of all "exceeds." Give him some room to grow. ;) She commented on how well he reads- he reads questions as questions, gets the emphasis correct if something is italicized or bold for emphasis. I've been noticing that recently, as well. It's really fun to listen to him read.
I mentioned that I had tried to help Kellen with upcoming standardized tests- filling in the bubbles and not making outside marks. She showed me his math test. He was getting ahead of her reading it to the class, so she told him to go on ahead. He was supposed to just circle the answer on the test, no particular instructions. As the test went on, his circles got bigger and bigger, and then started to turn into whales and dragons.
Then she showed me some of his writing samples. He had all the types of sentences written correctly- punctuation, capitalization, variety. He had written about how he is a little inventor. His spelling is a bit on the creative side, but he's getting conventions down pretty well. Then she showed me another sample from writing- they're supposed to write for 20 minutes. He tends to space out. He had one sentence written. She reminded him, "Dude, I'm going to be meeting with your mother next week. You might want to do more." So he wrote more about cleaning at home. He helps his mom clean. He dusts. He tries to vacuum. The picture he drew for his writing was a vacuum cleaner- very obviously a vacuum cleaner- in blue and gray. Our vacuum is blue and silver.