Exciting News!

A few months ago, I called our school district and asked if they admitted children into Kindergarten whose birthdays were less than a month after the September 1st cut off.  I found out that the Early Childhood Education office offers an assessment, and if the child meets the criteria, then they are conditionally placed in Kindergarten and are assessed again at 30 and 60 days into the school year before making it a permanent placement.

I explained that Amy's birthday is at the end of September, and that I wasn't sure if I really wanted to put her in Kindergarten this year, but I was curious to see if she was academically ready for it. The director asked me if I wanted to schedule an appointment for Amy to come in and take the test.  I said, "Why not?"  I figured that if she met the criteria, I could always decide whether or not to put her in Kindergarten regardless of the test results.

So yesterday was the BIG day.  Amy and I drove over to the district office building.  There are 19 steps up to the front door, and the interior stairways have some pretty awesome acoustics.  Amy loved hearing her voice echo.  Anyway, I sat down the hall a little bit while Amy went into a small room with the teacher who was administering the test.  I could hear bits and pieces of the questions and answers, but nothing that would give me a clue as to how Amy was doing.

After 20 minutes, the teacher peeked out and asked me to come in to go over the results.  She was very impressed with Amy's large vocabulary and ability to express herself.  She was also pleased that Amy was patient and sat quietly waiting for instructions (who is this kid?!).  But the biggest thing of all is:

AMY PASSED WITH FLYING COLORS!

She met each of the criteria, and her scores were high.  The only things she needs to work on are cutting around a picture, and printing her letters.  (She can do both fairly all right, but could use some extra practice.)

So starting September 1st, I'll have 2 girls in full-day school!