3-27-13

The boys have half day off school today and tomorrow and then they'll begin spring break - yay!!! Around 1:00 I went out to check on the ewes and Ewe 614 had just delivered a lamb in the big stall. I moved her and the lamb into a lambing jug. Then I went to the house to see if the boys wanted to watch the ewe deliver her second lamb. They peeked in the stall and got to watch. Jacob took some pictures of the new lambs. I towel dried them and took care of their umbilicals.  The first lamb is a girl and weighs 5lbs 2oz. The other is a boy weighing 6lbs 3oz. These lambs were not nursing so I expressed milk from the mom and tubed both lambs. They are doing very well now.

                                                       Silly faces:)

This evening we had conferences at school. The first conference was with Adam's teacher. We sat down and the first thing she said was, "I am blown away by Adam!" She had so many great thing to say about him. He has learned so much and is writing beautifully, reading at a level 4, he gets along well with others, has many friends, and is very well behaved. He clips up to gold almost every day and often clips onto the teachers shirt. He never causes any problems. Wow how nice to go to a conference and hear so many good things. We were early for our appointment with Jacob's teacher and she was running behind so we got to read the kids writings and see pictures on the wall in the hallway. For Jacob's class they all drew self portraits and wrote about themselves. Jacob didn't have a self portrait but he did write a little (he said he didn't have time to draw). One of his sentences said, I'm a artist because I use my right brain:) Jacob's teacher said that his ability to focus in class seems to be getting worse. Mr Hook (school psychologist) and Miss Ludy (special ed teacher) joined us for the conference. Mr Hook recently did additional observation of Jacob's behavior in  class. He observed Jacob during independent reading and found that Jacob was on-task 5% of the time while his male peers were on-task 68% of the time. A couple days later Mr Hook observed Jacob while they were seated on an area rug and given writing instructions. During this Jacob was on-task 46% while his peers were on-task 79%. Then Jacob's behavior was recorded as he worked independently on his writing work. He was on-task 66% and his peers were on-task 88%. Miss Ludy says that Jacob is making slight progress in his reading but is off task much of the time and is very easily distracted. Providing him with an independent task is often unproductive because he is not able to complete it without adult support and reminders. She also says that at his level he reads accurately much of the time but has difficulty retelling the story. They say that he is not being disruptive to the rest of his class but rather to himself. They are thinking he may have a inattentive disorder and gave us this information in case we want to have him further tested with his doctor. Jacob got S's in Math, Money, Double digit regrouping and a U in spelling. We told Mrs Daly that we rarely ever see any spelling words to practice with him. She said, "well he puts a list in his mailbox every Monday."  We aren't sure what happens with the list but we aren't getting it (and Jacob says he hasn't seem them). We asked the teacher if Tuesday comes and we don't have the list if we could get one from her (thinking email). She acted like this was impossible so we'll see. Anyway Jacob did good on his writing review. He had a Catchy lead (If you like Indian in the Cupboard then I bet you'll like the Magic Tree house), Stated an opinion, Supplied 3 or more reasons for his opinion, and a strong ending. The only thing in his writing review that didn't meet expectations was his use of Grade level conventions. Thank you Vikki and Kenzie for watching the boys and our sheep while we were gone!