Progress Report

The Monkey's 2nd marking period report card came home and he got all Ms -- "M" being early elementary school coding for "most of the time" (as in he's performing the particular skill most of the time). I'm hoping that will eventually translate into something like "A"s when he gets older...but we'll see. The teacher comments were generally favorable too...although they report that he is a bit overly-energetic and silly at times. Those comments should come as exactly zero shock to anyone who's spent five minutes with him. All in all, I think first grade is officially going well for the little guy!

Perhaps even more exciting than the report card, however, is the fact that the Monkey wrote his first "book" this week. Now, for those of you keeping up with his blog, you may have already noticed that his attempts at writing are often disjointed and sometimes a bit odd. He tries to replicate things that he's read that he thinks are funny...and the effect is roughly the verbal equivalent of being thrust inside a Picasso painting. So when I tell you these books are nothing like that, you'll know what a huge statement of progress that is...


I was skeptical when he told me he'd made two "books" during free-draw period at daycare. He begged me most of the night to look at them, and it took me until nearly his bedtime to stop moving long enough to sit down. I couldn't have been more surprised by what he handed me. His books, each 4 pages long, were actually...stories! And the stories had beginnings and middles and ends! AND they were written in whole sentences...with punctuation!!!


He'd invented the story of the Super 3 (himself, MonkeyDad and me) on one of our walks with the dog. He decided that his super power was thought control...and anything he thought up could come to life. My super power was teleportation and MonkeyDad could be several places at once. The first story (page 2 is above) is how we got our powers one day, out of the blue. And each of us says "weird" when we notice what what we can now do. Still the throwaway humor that he loves...but in the context of an actual story.


I lavished so much praise on the little guy he nearly couldn't fall asleep...and I encouraged him like crazy to keep writing like this. His imagination is a perpetual motion machine...can you imagine the amazing things he'll be able to do if he gets in the habit now of channeling all that energy?