Exceeding expectations!

This week in addition to Alexander and Alyssa's regular 20 spelling words Alyssa was given 10 bonus words. These bonus words were big words- argument, characters, fable, tortoise, lesson, moral, pitcher, plodding, gathering and foolish. So I told her to just focus on getting her regular words down and maybe pick a few of the bonus. But to not study them all since it is better to get all of the words correct and a few bonus words rather than a lot of words wrong. Well she would have no part in this! She wanted to do them all! So yesterday when I gave A & A their pretests she got 26/30 correct! I was really impressed and told her that I was wrong and glad that she choose to work on all of them. She happily studied her words last night and today she told me, with a grin from ear to ear, that she got 190%. She only got 1 letter of 1 word wrong!!

While in Xander's class this morning his teacher complimented him on being such a great independent worker and spoke with him about when I come in he relies a bit more on me. She asked him to show us what a wonderful worker he can be and do it on his own. He did an awesome job! She told me about this at the end and this led to a discussion about giving children opportunities to rise above and really show what they've got!

These were both good reminders to me that when you give children the opportunity to step up they will usually meet & EXCEED your expectations!

1. lessons learned over and over again...

2. Exceeded expectations!

3. being A & A's mom