Check out the progress

Some of you may remember back in the day when we took a close up look at the abilities of the four year olds of Happy class. Now that six months have passed and many of them have turned five, let us examine their progress, shall we?

Here is Mindy's worksheet. Though quite capable, Mindy prefers to do anything BUT follow the directions of the sheet. I once tried an "I write a letter, you write a letter approach" which was only so effective. On this day she evidently made an attempt to get started but became distracted with turning her h's into faces. Can't blame her - faces are pretty cool.

Here is superstar Yoon's worksheet; well done and without much to comment on. Yoon rocks. Today he started a fairly common kid thing (because I know all there is to know about common kid things) of whispering to me in my ear. When he wanted to tell me something he said "Jessica, ear please." We're on a first name basis.

This is Elizabeth's sheet. She has been easing her way into my favourite girl position over the last few months. She works slowly and carefully, putting great effort into her work. Looks like here she's got a slight backwards curve to her printing. Any analysts out there? She is the only kid in my class who makes sure to color and draw things realistically. No rainbow whales for her. It's grey all the way. I wonder if that's a good or bad thing.

Usually Elliot doesn't do anything when handed a pencil. When I distribue the crayons and give explicit directions to colour this or that, ten minutes later he'll come up to me and with his high pitched voice ask, "Teacher, colour??" "Yes, Elliot". He's still got that single pathetic little beauty mark right on his nose. I think his small h's need work.

Alice is my new little girl and she's doing great! I think she's probably one of the most advanced in the class despite her recent arrival, which is a great relief for me. Here she seemed to get a little ahead of herself with her big H's. Maybe they're all friends? I'm not sure. You should see the outfits she comes to school in. I've never seen more colours on one sweater, pair of tights, and skirt than I do on her. I guess she got a little creative with her fancy pencil border. Way to go, Alice.

Brian can write his name!! It took him so damn long but finally he seems to have gotten it. Though it looks like he forgot the u in Thursday but who can blame him. He didn't do too bad of a job with his H's but you should have seen his struggle with little e. It is a bit of a loopy and confusing one. G was rather difficult too. He's sweaty and clingy and has a hard time listening to the rules, but he's still a good guy.

Look, it's Peter! Peter is my class genius! He can even read the sentences that I put at the bottom of these pages, even if I haven't taught some of the simple words like 'says'. Alright, he's not perfect, but he's still very impressive. He finally learned not to write his entire name in uppercase letters. Maybe his printing isn't that great here but his vocabulary would knock your socks off. He thought of the word 'ink' for the letter 'I' the other day. Who knows ink?

Finally there's little Molly's work. She forgot the h in Thursday, again, no big deal. I think she's being sneaky and finishing her work faster by making her letters extra big. Thatta girl, Moll. I named her Molly and it's quite fitting. She's got these little sort of inward looking eyes and the chubbiest cheeks ever. In contrast to colourful Alice, Molly gets dressed in greys and blacks and sometimes blues, which is rather unusual in this country. But she's seriously cute and Peter has a deep-seeded crush on her. She's happily obvlivious of her power.


Not shown is Stephanie's work because she has the bad of habit of scribbling all over her sheet and then stuffing it into her backpack. Luckily her father, the director of my school, told me not to give her too much attention. She's a young one, she is.

Thanks for all your comments and kind words after my self-pitying post last night. I'm feeling back to normal for now. Maybe I'm not self-revealing enough on here.