First tooth, Halloween, and Tr. conference

This was a big week for firsts! Ethan had his very first Halloween, and went Trick-or-Treating for the first time. He loved it. The holiday combines two of his very favorite things in life: candy and costumes. Ethan dressed up as a Ninja “with three swords” as he tells anyone who asks. We went trick-or-treating around the block with our neighbors Nicholas (skeleton) and William (Spiderman). Here's a photo with them and two neighbor girls, Ninja Ethan is on the far right. All the kids had a blast, and Ethan is still working on his candy collection (he dumps out the candy on the floor and sorts through it to pick out one piece to eat when he’s allowed).

Ethan also lost his first tooth this week. It’s been loose for about a week, and finally came out at school. I thought it was cute that the nurse has a handy collection of little tooth boxes to give out to the kids so they don’t lose them. Ethan put the tooth under his pillow last night, and the tooth fairy gave him three little cars in exchange, which he enjoyed very much. (Guess the tooth fairy figured he’d enjoy cars more than money.)

We had our first parent/teacher meeting with his kindergarten teacher this week. She said that he was doing very well, and keeping up with the class. The teacher said she found it hard to fathom (as do we) that one year ago he was half a world away speaking a completely different language. She said that he’s well behaved, is helpful, and makes friends easily. I was very happy to hear that she thinks he’s doing so well.

Ethan has been learning a lot in kindergarten. (Kindergarten, by the way, is the new first grade. No more just playing – they work them pretty hard the whole time they’re there). Things he can do now that he couldn’t in August: recognize most of the letters, pronunce of half of them, and hear a word and often figure out what letter it starts with.

We also met Ethan’s “English as a Second Language” (ESL) teacher who he sees twice a week for 30 minutes. It quickly became clear to Mark and me that, ironically, Ethan speaks English about as well as she does. (What could Concord possibly have been thinking by hiring a non-native English speaker to teach ESL? Reminds me of the “blind leading the blind” style of language instruction that we saw in Kazakhstan.) Strangely, when she showed us the assessment tool that was used to place him in ESL tutoring, it showed Ethan to be slightly above average for a kindergartener in language skills. Hmmmmm. Even more strangely, we have to actually sign something and go out of our way to not have him in ESL instruction with a non-native English speaker whose comprehension levels are comparable to his own.